Without a Trace
by ChandaK562
Summary: One morning, Dr. James announces that Lona has resigned from Kingdom Hospital. How will Elmer cope?
1. Default Chapter

Elmer hurried down the corridor shaking his head even as he rushed.  
He was going to be so late for today's staff meeting that it wasn't even funny. And today it wasn't even his fault. Lona had wanted to talk to him about her latest idea for an experiment and he had ended up waiting for her for what seemed like forever down in the sleep lab onto for her not to show up to meet him. He shook his head a bit as he thought about that. Maybe that had been her experiment, to see how well he could handle waiting or something? he really hoped that that wasn't what Lona was going to try testing next with him, or if it was, please don't let her figure out one biggie that he had been waiting quite some time for. He would be terrified to see what she would cook up to test his patience in that area.  
  
Dr. James stopped speaking as Elmer entered, drawing attention to the fact that he was late pretty nicely. Elmer felt his face reddening as he dove into a seat next to his father. As he sat down, he glance around the room for Lona sure that she would be trying to hold back laughter at making him late. No sign of her though. "Dad?" Elmer hissed into his father's ear. "Where's Lona?"  
  
"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," Dr. James continued, shooting a look at Elmer that said without words that if the young man didn't behave himself and stop disrupting Jesse's beloved meetings that he was soon going to be heading for the most unpleasant hospital duties that could be found. "I'm sure that some of you have noticed that Dr. Massingale is not with us this morning. I'm sad to announce that effective last night, Dr. Massingale turned in her resignation for a position out of state and will no longer be with us. I'm sure that you'll all join me in wishing her very well in her future endeavors. Her absence does leave us a bit short handed, though so until a replacement is located, the sleep lab will be closed."  
  
Jesse continued to talk but Elmer was no longer listening. Lona had resigned? No matter how many times he said the three word phrase inside his head, it refused to sink in. Why would Lona resign? She had never said anything about another job offer. When he saw her last night,  
the only thing she had said was about needing to talk to him about her new experiment idea. Would she have done that if she was on her way to tender her resignation? And Lona just leaving the sleep lab to whoever Jesse ended up dumping it on? That place was like Lona's baby. She wouldn't just leave without making sure it was in good hands!  
  
As soon as the meeting was over, Elmer jumped up and rushed to talk to Jesse. "What's going on here?" he demanded. "Where's Lona? She wouldn't just suddenly quit her job like that! What's going on?"  
  
"That's what I would like to know." Hook said as he joined Elmer with Chris and Louis right behind him. "I saw Lona yesterday and she didn't say a word about leaving. What's going on? Where did she go?"  
  
"I wish I could tell you," Jesse said with a glance down at a paper on the top of the stack that he was carrying. "I'm afraid that I'm as baffled as the rest of you. I found Dr. Massingale's letter of resignation waiting on my desk when I came in this morning." He deposited the paper in question so that they all could inspect it. "As you can see,  
all she says is that another job opportunity opened up and she's resigning effective immediately. And a fine predicament she's left me in too. I don't know where I'm going to find someone to take her place. For some reason, people aren't eager to apply to our neurology department. I can't understand it at all. And we just upgraded it so much too."  
  
"Too bad we upgraded at the same time that we downgraded things with hiring Stegman," Hook muttered under his breath. "So, did Lona say where she was going to?" This situation sounded a bit strange still to him.  
  
"No idea. I'm sorry." Jesse said with a shake of his head as he left the room to spread more demoralizing Morning Air throughout the hospital.  
  
Elmer looked around the room as soon as he was gone, a desperate,  
heartbroken look on his face as if his entire world had fallen apart.  
"Lona wouldn't leave like that! She wouldn't!" He felt sobs building up and he quickly lowered his head and rushed from the room before anyone could see him starting to cry. What had happened to Lona? She couldn't have just walked away without a word. She couldn't! 


	2. chapter 2

As soon as Elmer was safely out of hearing range, Louis, Hook and Chris looked at each other for a moment before all starting to speak almost at once.  
  
"You don't honestly thing that Lona would leave like that, do you?"  
Chris asked as she looked around, hoping that one of the two others could say something that would make all of this make sense.  
  
"Maybe.... I should have talked to Elmer, made sure that he left Lona alone." Louis said as he shook his head sadly, at the same time, a bit of anger with his son starting to build. Lona had been a good friend over the years and for her to suddenly be gone like this because of his son's actions.... "Why couldn't he just leave her alone?! It was obvious that she wasn't interested!"  
  
"No use getting mad at him, though." Hook said as he reached over and patted Louis's shoulder trying to calm him down a bit. He was definitely feeling annoyed with Elmer himself but what good would it do to find him and bawl him out now for his pursuing Lona until the situation got to this point. All it would do would be to upset Elmer and from the look on his face when Jesse announced that Lona had resigned, he was more than upset enough already. "What we need to do right now is see if we can figure out where in the world Lona went to. Did she say anything to anyone about a new job offer?"  
  
"Not to me," Chris said as the group headed out of the meeting room and down the hall. "And you would think that someone would have heard something, wouldn't you? It would have had to have been a seriously good offer to pull Lona away from the sleep lab like that. That place is practically her baby." She looked over at Louis. "She didn't say anything to you, did she?"  
  
"No." Louis paused for a moment, running over all of his recent conversations with Lona, wanting to make sure that he hadn't missed something, some sort of clue. "No, she didn't say a word about any sort of new job offer." Chris was right. For Lona to have left the sleep lab like this, she would have had to have received some sort of fantastic offer and something like that would have been bound to have leaked into the hospital gossip network at some point. "Do you think the job thing was the real reason that she left?" Louis asked, as a sudden worry hit him. "Or do you thing that maybe Elmer just got to be too much and...." He shook his head as he thought of it. This was all his fault. He should have done something to stop Elmer's pursuing Lona long ago but he had just laughed it off as a crush that needed to run its course, had even told Lona to just ignore it and it would eventually go away. Now look at what had happened!  
  
"I find it kind of hard to believe that Lona would quit over Elmer." Hook knew that the younger doctor could definately be annoying but was he really annoying enough to make Lona give up something that she loved like the sleep lab? The more that he thought about the situation, the more that he couldn't see something like that happening. "There has to be something else going on here."  
  
"The problem is what's going on." Louis wanted to believe that his son wasn't to blame for this but there was a part of him that wouldn't let go of that notion. He was definately going to have to have a talk with Elmer soon, was going to have to let him know that his behavior towards Lona had gone so far beyond acceptable that it wasn't funny. Would she come back if he could promise that Elmer wouldn't bother her anymore?  
  
"Only way to find out what's going on is to find Lona." Chris patted Louis's shoulder as well, trying to calm the older doctor. He looked seriously ticked with Elmer and even if she was a bit annoyed with him at present she really didn't see what good Louis yelling at him would do. "Why don't we go downstairs and take a look at the lab. Maybe there's something down there that might give us a clue where Lona went."  
  
Elmer wandered through the hospital in a daze, oblivious to his father and his friends' plans to search for information on Lona's whereabouts. His mind wasn't letting him process the fact that Lona was really gone quite yet. It was too big of shock for him to handle. How could she have just left like that? Had she really been that mad at him,  
mad enough to run away without a word, without saying goodbye?  
  
Elmer shook his head angrily, trying to force that thought completely out of his brain. No, that couldn't be what happened, it couldn't be! He had seen Lona the night before and she had been fine! She had even been planning more experiments that she wanted to do with him.  
Why would she do that if she was going to leave?  
  
'Why would she do it, because you drove her crazy, that's why.' A little voice in Elmer's head taunted him as he felt tears starting to sting at his eyes.  
  
"I didn't. I didn't." Elmer frantically ran over the encounter with Lona from the night before, seeking some sort of reassurance that Lona couldn't possibly have decided to leave because of him, because of something that he had done. Had he said something to upset her? He didn't think so. He had only been down in the lab for a few minutes the night before. How could he have had time to tick her off?  
  
'Fast worker, aren't you?' The voice continued to taunt him as Elmer turned, heading for the parking lot. He couldn't stay here, not knowing that Lona was gone and it was all his....  
  
"Elmer?" Just then Dr. Gupta came down the hallway towards him.  
"I just heard the weirdest thing about...."  
  
Elmer couldn't stand it, couldn't stand to hear anymore about Lona being gone. "I.... I have to go." he whispered as he turned and fled out into the parking lot. He didn't care if he was supposed to be working.  
Let Dr. James fire him. What did it matter now with Lona.... Suddenly he stopped, an object in the lot grabbing his attention.  
  
He slowly walked over, not believing what he was seeing. Lona's car. What in the world was Lona's car doing here if Lona was.... He looked at the automobile for a moment, not really sure of what to do,  
before turning and heading back towards the hospital. He had to get his dad and Hook fast. Something wasn't right about this. If Lona had resigned, then what in the world was her car still doing here? 


	3. chapter 3

The sleep lab was the first place that Elmer went. He didn't know why exactly he chose to check there first. Maybe it was because it was the first place he had wanted to run when he heard the news about Lona but....  
  
"Dad!" he called as he rushed in, sighing with relief when he spotted his father, Hook and Chris. Surely they would be able to help him figure out what in the world was going on.  
  
"There you are." Louis frowned as he looked up from checking in the drawers and saw his son standing there. "We need to have a long talk about what you've been doing to Lona lately!"  
  
Elmer started to back out of the room, his father's look worrying him more than a little. He forced himself to take control, though, to not give in to the fear and to flee. Something was very, very wrong here.  
This entire thing with Lona made no sense at all and with her car still here... Something had happened to her. He just knew that something had happened to her. What if she needed help? He couldn't run away just because he was afraid of being yelled at for a bit.  
  
"Louis." Hook walked over, laying a hand on the older doctor's shoulder to try to calm him. Yelling at Elmer was only going to make things worse at this point. "Elmer, what do you need? If you're just wanting to see if we know where Lona is...."  
  
"I was just out in the parking lot." Elmer wanted to just grab them and drag them up there. Something serious had to be wrong, he knew it had to be. He forced himself to try to explain the situation rationally,  
though. "I was just out in the parking lot." he repeated once more.  
"Lona's car is still there. Why would her car be in the parking lot of she resigned?"  
  
Chris, Hook and Louis looked at each other for a moment. Okay,  
they had all agreed that there was definately something odd about Lona's supposed resignation but the fact that her car was there still, that was more than a little odd.  
  
"Show us what you found, Elmer." Hook said as he started out of the lab, waving at the younger doctor to lead the way.  
  
A little bit later, he four doctors were in the parking lot,  
staring at Lona's car in confusion.  
  
"I don't understand this." Chris said slowly as she peered into the driver's side window of the car. "Everything looks normal." She shook her head as she peered once more through the window. She wasn't sure how she was expecting the car to look if Lona had really resigned but shouldn't there be some sort of sign of what happened?  
  
Hook reached out, pulling at the passenger door. "It's locked here." He said, looking around as he spoke. no sign of any sort of struggle, any marks to signal that something unusual had happened. Did that mean that Lona had never made her way to her car or... "Does anyone have any idea when the last time was that someone saw Lona?"  
  
"I saw her last night." Elmer said with a worried look. "She wanted me to drop by the lab this morning. She had an experiment in mind that she wanted to talk to me about this morning." A rather panicked look was growing in Elmer's eyes as he spoke. "She wouldn't have done that if she was planning to resign!' he shook his head frantically, trying to make the notion that he must have done something to Lona to make her decide to flee, go away.  
  
Hook, Chris and Louis looked at each other for a moment as Elmer's words sunk in. If Lona had been planning to meet Elmer this morning then what in the world was going on now? Why would she just....  
  
"Let's go talk to Jesse again. I want to get another look at that resignation letter. Something doesn't sound right about this." Hook told the others as they started back towards the hospital once more. As they walked, he moved back to Elmer's side. The younger doctor was looking totally shell shocked and acted like he was moving about while still half asleep. Hook reached out, gently patting his shoulder. "It'll be okay,  
Elmer. We'll figure out what happened to Lona."  
  
A little bit later, the group was crowded into Jesse's office. "I don't understand this at all," Jesse said as Hook checked the note once more. "Why would Dr. Massingale's care still be in the parking lot if she turned in her resignation last night?"  
  
"You didn't see her when she turned this in?" Hook asked as he looked up.  
  
"No, it was on my desk when I came in this morning. Why?" Jesse asked.  
  
"Name's typed, not signed. Anyone could have done it." Hook passed the note over so that Chris and Louis could check it out as well.  
  
Elmer peered over his father's shoulder, ignoring the impatient noise his dad made. Something about the typing on the note.... "That's wrong." He said slowly. "They typing, it doesn't look like what Lona usually uses. It's too...." He didn't exactly know how to describe the difference but he certainly knew enough to tell that there was one. "She couldn't have written that."  
  
Hook looked at Elmer cautiously. Okay, he knew that Elmer was more than a little upset about Lona's sudden disappearance and might just be seeing some things that weren't really there but.... Elmer was the only one of them that would probably be in a position to know any small differences, though. Hook figured he had to take a chance and assume that he might be right. He reached out, snagging the phone on Jesse's desk.  
"I'm calling the police and seeing about getting someone over here to check this out. Something's not right about this entire situation." 


	4. Chapter 4

Hook listened with growing frustration to the police officer on the other end of the line. "Ye, I understand that," he said slowly. "Yes, I understand that she's a competent adult but..." He nodded slowly. "Yes,  
we'll call back then if we haven't heard from her."  
  
"What did they say?" Elmer demanded the second that Hook hung up the phone. Hook calling the police had made this definitely more real for him as well as more frightening. If the police were needed, didn't that mean that something bad had happened to Lona, that.... "When will they be here?"  
  
"That's the problem." Hook shook his head as he recalled the conversation. "Since Lona's a competent adult and we don't really have anything here that's screaming foul play...."  
  
"Foul play?" Elmer exclaimed, paling visibly when he heard that.  
Foul play? Hook thought that someone had....  
  
"Elmer, I don't know what to think at this point. I just know what the police told me. They said if there were no obvious signs of foul play...."  
  
"Wait a minute. What about the car?" Chris asked. "If Lona left,  
then why in the world is her car still here?"  
  
"Tried to tell them that but they said she could have taken a cab or have been picked up by someone." Hook said with a shake of his head.  
"They've obviously never tried to get a cab at this hospital,"  
  
Chris muttered under her breath. She had been forced to call for a cab one night a few months ago while her car was in the shop and saying it was difficult would be putting the entire thing mildly. It seemed that many of the cabbies were more than slightly nervous about being anywhere near Kingdom Hospital, especially at night.  
  
Hook grinned slightly at Chris before continuing. "There's the fact that Lona supposedly left a note too." Suddenly something occurred to him. "Wait a minute. How could she get in here to leave a note in the first place?" With Jesse gone for the night, wouldn't the person who left the note need a key to enter?  
  
"The one of the earthquakes did something to the lock." Jesse said with a frown as he went over to his door and rattled the knob. "I've been trying to get Johnny up here to fix it. Someone keeps coming in every night and raiding my cupcake drawer. Horrible annoyance."  
  
"So anyone could have came in and left the note." Hook said with a frustrated shake of his head. There had to be something here that they could take to the police to get them investigating. The more he thought about this, the stranger that it sounded to him.  
  
Elmer and Louis were still looking at the note, trying to figure out what in the world was different about it from Lona's usual method of typing. The more Louis stared, the more that he thought that his son might be right about a difference but he couldn't put his finger on what it was.  
  
"It's the font, I think." Elmer said slowly, not really sure that he had found the right difference but.... "This is all swirly, like it would be if someone wrote it by hand but Lona usually...."  
  
"She usually uses something plain." Louis nodded, finally realizing what the difference in the note was. He shook his head as he looked down at the note. Lona was simple and fairly practical, especially on the job. He just couldn't see her using some sort of almost romantic looking font to type a resignation letter. "Hook, what did the police tell you about...."  
  
"They said that if we didn't hear anything from her or find out where she is in three days, they'll be able to file a missing persons report but until then unless some more signs of foul play..." Hook said with a shake of his head.  
  
"Three days?" Fear washed over Elmer as he heard that. Who knows what could have happened to Lona in three days? What if she was sick or hurt or... He felt himself starting to hyperventilate slightly. No! They had to find Lona now, before something....  
  
"Calm down, Elmer. We're not going to just sit around waiting on the police, okay?" Hook said as he walked over, gently patting the younger doctor's shoulder to try to reassure him. The last thing that they needed on their hands at the moment was for Elmer to go hysterical on top of Lona's disappearance.  
  
"Check around, see if you can find out who left this letter here."  
Hook ordered Jesse before starting for the door. "Let's check the sleep lab again, see if there might be anything there that we missed the first time." How in the world could Lona have vanished into seemingly thin air from the middle of a busy hospital.  
  
"You don't think we might need to have a little talk with Mrs.  
Druse, do you?" Chris whispered.  
  
"Maybe if we don't find something quick." Hook replied back in the same low tone. He couldn't believe that he was looking at possible supernatural reasons for this but....  
  
Elmer had to fight back tears as he followed along behind Chris and Hook. Foul play. Those two words kept running through his head. No, if something had happened to Lona.... He would rather learn that she had just got sick of him than for something bad to have happened to her. Please just let her have got sick of putting up with him!  
  
"Elmer, it's going to be alright." Louis said as he put an arm around his son's shoulders. Okay, he was a bit annoyed with Elmer still and concerned that his son might have done something to aggravate Lona into leaving but seeing Elmer looking that heartbroken, he couldn't help but want to reach out, to comfort him. "We'll find Lona and it will probably turn out that this entire thing was a big misunderstanding. Just try not to panic, okay?" 


	5. Chapter 5

"Okay," Hook said as the group entered the sleep lab once more.  
He stopped, running his eyes around the room, trying to figure out where in the world they could best look for answers. They didn't even know why Lona had vanished, after all, if she had left of her own free will or not. That would definitely complicate things. How would they even know what might be important and what might not.  
  
"I'll check the computer." Chris said with a frown. Okay, it was looking like the new job offer probably wasn't too likely but maybe there was something on there, a schedule of what Lona had planned or something that would show what had been last written on the computer, something to prove that the resignation letter wasn't from her. As she moved the mouse to deactivate the screen saver, she realized there was going to be a problem, though. The files that she likely needed were probably password protected.  
  
"It's the day that she graduated med school." Elmer said as he looked over at Chris and saw the sudden look of concern on her face.  
  
"Elmer, could I ask how you know the password to Lona's files?"  
Louis frowned as he looked over at his son. If he had been snooping and poking around in her things... Was it possible that Lona had actually left of her own free will to get away from him?  
  
"I was kind of curious about what all of those tests she was running on me said." Elmer turned slightly red, knowing that that wasn't the whole truth, though. He had been wanting to check and make sure that Lona hadn't included anything along with the files saying what a loser he was or something similar. And it wasn't really snooping, after all, he reassured himself. The files were on him. He was just wanting to check his own files. He was sure that he was allowed to do that.  
  
"Guess we might be getting some use out of you following Lona around like you do after all." Hook laughed slightly trying to lighten the moment, to keep Louis from exploding at his son. Yelling at Elmer wouldn't help and his knowledge of Lona might come in handy no matter how he had happened to come across it. "So, did she say anything last night, mention anyone or any sort of problems she might be having?"  
  
Elmer shook his head. "Nothing. She just wanted to try out a new experiment she had thought up but I was just so tired last night." He shook his head as he thought of that. Lona had worried that his exhaustion might interfere with the test results but he had been concerned for another reason. If they ended up in that morgue again like they had in Lona's last little test with him, he didn't want to be practically ready to fall asleep in the middle! Okay, Lona had been plenty ticked at him over their first little morgue visit but he was pretty sure that if he fell asleep on her,  
she would be even more upset. He had a feeling women took those things the wrong way.  
  
"She just talked to you about tests?" Hook asked. Now if they had just talked about tests then why in the world was Elmer suddenly looking so embarrassed? He shook his head slightly not sure if he really wanted to know what might be going on in Elmer's head or not. "She didn't say anything about say, a sick family member or...."  
  
"Closest relatives that Lona has are some cousins and they don't really talk." Elmer said with a shake of his head. "The only thing she said was about the experiments and she was really eager to get started with those. Why would she leave if she was...."  
  
"Do I even want to know why you know about Lona's family situation?" Hook grinned once more before something suddenly occurred to him and he slapped his forehead at his own stupidity. "Chris, ring her cell phone. We need to know where Lona is, we should probably just ask her."  
  
Chris picked up the phone, looking more than a little embarrassed as she dialed. Why hadn't they thought of this before and saved themselves some trouble. After several rings the embarrassment faded, though. "Hook,  
the company says that the phone's out of service." she said quietly.  
  
Phone out of service. That definitely didn't sound good but Hook tried not to let his reaction to the news show. All it would do would be to make Elmer freak even more than he already was. "Try back in a few minutes. It could be a problem with the company." he told Chris before turning to Louis and Elmer. "Why don't the two of you spread out and talk to as many people as you can, see if anyone saw Lona last night after you did, Elmer. Maybe someone else will have a clue as to where she might be." 


	6. Chapter 6

Elmer could barely keep from crying as he trudged back down the hallway towards the sleep lab. He had looked everywhere and talked to anyone he could think of. He had even risked talking to Carrie who had promptly fainted upon hearing about Lona being mysteriously missing. Honestly, how could Lona have issues with him and still be friend with the amazing fainting nurse? He was suspicious that she spent more time unconscious than she did actually working. That just couldn't be good. No one had seen Lona, though. No one had any clue about where she might be and when he had told a few people about the resignation mess, he had just gotten these pitying looks. Finally he had stopped mentioning that altogether.  
Lona couldn't have resigned. He knew she couldn't have. She wouldn't have left no matter how annoying he had been, would she?  
  
"Please come back. Just please come back." He whispered under his breath as he slumped back against the wall for a moment, struggling to hold back tears. If Lona would just come back, he would leave her alone,  
wouldn't do a single thing to aggravate her, wouldn't keep trying to get her to go out with him no matter how much he loved her. If that wasn't what she wanted then.... Priests seemed to have that celibacy thing down pretty well, after all. Well, okay, most of them. How did they manage that?  
Maybe he ought to ask or....  
  
"Elmer, you okay?" Suddenly Hook appeared from what felt like out of no where.  
  
"No one's seen her that I could find." Elmer said quietly. "Hook?"  
Elmer looked at him with desperation in his eyes now. "You don't think that Lona might have really done it, do you? That she might have really left? I swear I didn't do anything to bother her last night! I swear that I didn't...."  
  
"No, Elmer, I don't. You know as well as I do how obsessed Lona is with that lab and her experiments." Okay, Hook was privately slightly worried that Elmer's behavior could have finally pushed Lona over the edge even though it was just looking less and less likely. Elmer obviously needed some serious reassurance, though. "And if she resigned, why wouldn't she have taken her car with her? According to Chris, taxi service around here is terrible."  
  
"But if she didn't quit, then where is she?" Elmer said softly as he followed Hook down the hall towards the lab. "Why isn't she here where she belongs?"  
  
"I don't know. Elmer, are you sure that she doesn't have any relatives that might have needed help or something?"  
  
Elmer shook his head in response. "I know because I asked what she was doing last Christmas." Last Christmas had actually been his best one to date, mainly because Lona had thought that the invitation to come over for the holidays had come from his father and hadn't been able to figure a way out of it when she found out that it was Elmer's idea.  
  
"What about friends or something?" Hook glanced over at Chris as the entered the lab, including her in the question. "Is there anyone that Lona might have had to leave town unexpectedly to help out?"  
  
"Not as far as I know," Chris said as Elmer shook his head no as well.  
"I've never even heard her mention anyone that wasn't connected to the hospital somehow." Chris looked up from the computer that she was working on as she spoke. Okay, Lona would probably hate this if she found out but.... At this point Chris would be thrilled if Lona would just show up and blow up at them for snooping. "I'm trying to check her email to see if I can find anything but I can't work out the password."  
  
"Here," Elmer said as he reached over Chris and typed in something.  
"Could I ask why in the world you know Lona's email password?" Louis said with a frown as he came into the lab. Okay, Elmer's explanation for knowing Lona's regular password was plausible but his son had absolutely no reason to be reading through her email. Had Elmer maybe pushed Lona to far? He was suddenly very afraid that the resignation letter might have actually been from her.  
  
Elmer hesitated before speaking. He could tell what his father was thinking and what Hook and Chris were beginning to think as well. Okay, he did have a perfectly reasonable excuse for knowing about Lona's email but if he told them.... Lona would definitely be furious with him for that if he told. Oh, no, if they could find her, he definitely didn't want to anger her the first thing. "I saw her type it in one day?" That sounded plausible, didn't it?  
  
Louis looked hard at Elmer, knowing that his son was hiding something.  
For the moment, he decided to let it go though. He could figure it out later and if it turned out that Elmer seriously had been bothering Lona,  
well, they would just have to have a long and serious talk. Lona was his friend and he wasn't letting Elmer get away with harassing her any longer.  
  
"Did you find anything, Louis?" Hook asked, hoping to take his older colleague's mind off what in the world his son might have been up to.  
Elmer was a kind of friend and he hated to see him end up in trouble even if he probably did deserve it.  
  
"Dr. Havens said he saw Lona last night. She said she was on her way home and certainly didn't say anything about resigning." Louis frowned for a moment before continuing. "He did notice that she looked a little pale,  
though."  
  
"Hook, take a look at this," Chris called as she looked up from checking the email. "Lona had appointments set up later this week over at the college to see about working out some more funding for some sleep studies. She wouldn't just...."  
  
"Looks like we might need to call the police again." Hook shook his head as he looked at the emails. No way would Lona just leave and abandon her precious sleep lab like this. 


	7. Chapter 7

Elmer quietly slipped out of the sleep lab even before Chris told what she had found in Lona's e-mail. What Dr. Havens had said about Lona looking pale had really bothered him. Okay, she had been fine when he had left her the night before but what if something had happened after, what if she had gotten sick? He shook his head slowly as he thought of it, trying to recall any pertinent details. Maybe Lona had dropped by the cafeteria or something? Everyone knew that the food in that place was enough to give people food poisoning at times. It was the place that had listed ptomaine soup on the menu, after all. Lona could be lying at home sick right now and in need of attention. Or at least someone to tell Dr. James that she hadn't quit and he could just hold off on filling her job.  
  
Elmer was in a kind of a daze the entire time he was driving to Lona's house. She had to be there, she had to be there. He kept telling himself.  
Her being sick made perfect sense, didn't it? And that resignation letter could have been some sort of stupid joke by someone who seriously needed to get their head examined. Maybe Brenda? She was going out with Stegman,  
after all, and if that wasn't a sign that she was insane, Elmer didn't know what was.  
  
"Lona?" Elmer called as he knocked on her door a little while later.  
As he knocked, he leaned over to try to peer into the closest window.  
Okay, if Lona caught him doing that, she would likely call the cops on him and report him to his father as definitely mentally deranged but concern for her led him to risk it. What if she was really sick and couldn't get to the door or something?  
  
Several minutes later when Lona still wasn't answering his knocks,  
Elmer was starting to get really concerned. Okay, he supposed that maybe if Lona was sick, she might not want to deal with him or something but couldn't she just come to the door for a minute? Or maybe call through the door and tell him to go away. He could do that if she wanted, would do anything as long as he knew that she was alright.  
  
"Lona?" he called as he knocked once more. "Listen, I'm really not here to bother you, okay? It's just we're kind of worried since you didn't show up at the hospital for work today and Dr. James found this stupid thing on his desk. Please, won't you just come to the door for a minute?  
I'll go away as soon as you do! Lona?"  
  
Okay, Elmer knew that he should go back to the hospital, get Hook or his dad over here to check things out. Lona would likely be more willing to open the door for one of them than for him, after all. He couldn't bring himself to go to his car and drive away though. What if she was really sick and needed help? He started to walk around the house, looking for a way in.  
  
A few minutes later, he had finally managed to pry a window open.  
"Lona?" He called again as he pulled himself up and through the window.  
He really, really hoped that her neighbors weren't the busybody type. All he needed was for the police to come. Of course, if she was really sick then maybe some help would be a good idea?  
  
"Lona? Where are you?" he called as he started to look through the house. Oh, if she wasn't sick, she was going to kill him for this but at the moment, he didn't really care. Something was going on here with the note and Lona not showing up.  
  
"Lona?" All of her things were there. Well, he thought they were anyway. Not like he had ever been invited to her house but it looked to him like all of the tastefully arranged furniture and items were where he thought they should be. He wouldn't let himself take the time to check things out even more though. He had to find Lona. His worry was increasing with every moment that passed without her storming out and telling him to get out of her house. What if she was really sick, what if she was....  
  
He pushed that thought away as he opened the bedroom door. It was obvious right away that Lona wasn't there. The bed was still perfectly made, like it hadn't even been slept in the night before. But if Lona hadn't slept there then where in the world was she?  
  
Elmer quickly checked the rest of the house, even going down to the basement and poking his head up into the crawl space that made up the attic. No Lona. He slumped down onto her smoothly made bed, knowing he was wrinkling it and she would be upset when she came home but he didn't care. Where was she? He reached out, picking up the bathrobe laying on the edge of the bed and held it to his face. He could still smell her scent.  
  
Suddenly Elmer heard a key turning in the front lock. He jumped up,  
not noticing that he was still holding onto the robe as he hurried into the hallway. "Lona?" he called anxiously. He wouldn't care how much she yelled at him, would make himself not care if it turned out that she had been out with another man, just so long as she was okay.  
  
"Elmer, what are you doing in here?!" Louis demanded as soon as he caught sight of his son. Okay, Elmer's behavior was definitely going beyond what was acceptable, way beyond it. Maybe Lona had really left to get away from it, to finally get some peace.  
  
"I imagine he's doing what we're doing." Hook said in a tone that he hoped would calm Louis down a bit. "Elmer, did you find anything? How long have you been here?"  
  
"Awhile. I thought Lona might be sick or something." Elmer said,  
barely able to keep from sobbing. Where was she? "All of her stuff is here. Where is she? She wouldn't have left without her things!" Surely he hadn't bothered her that much, that she would flee without even packing just to get away from him.  
  
"I don't know where she is, Elmer, but we're going to find her. She couldn't have just vanished into thin air." Hook said quietly, patting Elmer on the shoulder as he spoke. It was obvious that the younger doctor was about to fall totally apart. Come on. We'll go over things again, see if there might be any sort of clue. Four pairs of eyes are better than one." 


	8. Chapter 8

A little while later the group was gathered in Lona's living room,  
all of them looking more worried than every. Elmer was still clutching Lona's bathrobe, clinging to it like some sort of security blanket.  
  
"Did anyone find anything?" Hook asked. He was obviously going to take the lead in this whole mess. With how Louis was moving back and forth between anger at his son and worry for his friend, he was obviously in no shape to and as for Elmer, well, he was definitely in no shape to do anything but panic. Chris was definitely capable but from the looks of things, she was going to defer to his judgment on this.  
  
"All of her clothes are either in the closet or the clothes hamper." Elmer said with a shake of his head. "Well, except for what she was wearing yesterday. Where could she go without her clothes?" Somehow,  
he didn't really think that Lona was the type to decide to pay a trip to a nudist resort on the spur of the moment.  
  
"And how do you know so much about Lona's clothes?" Louis said s he looked at his son suspiciously. Okay, he knew that Elmer was really upset and this definitely wasn't the time to be pushing things with him but he was definitely worried. Lona was his friend. Could she have really left because of Elmer's constant pursuit of her? Had things turned more serious?  
  
"I'm not an idiot, you know, Dad." Elmer said with an angry look at his father. Why did his dad always do this to him, treat him like he was some sort of ignorant, foolish little boy. He felt tears starting to well up inside once more as he thought about it. He had tried so hard when he was younger, done anything he could think of to please his father but his dad had always preferred Edgar the golden boy to him. Why? Why wasn't he good enough for his dad, for Lona? He shook his head as he stood abruptly and stalked away, further back into the house. He couldn't stand it anymore.  
  
"Louis, you know Elmer's smart. Calm down, okay?" Hook said as he walked over and put a hand on the other doctor's shoulder, keeping him from rising and going after Elmer. He shook his head as he thought of the Elmer/Louis situation. He hated it when they got going like this and he knew it would only get worse the longer that it went on. "Louis, you can't just keep going after him like that. You know what Elmer's like."  
  
Louis hung his head, a bit stung by Hook's words. Of course he knew how sensitive his son was to any sort of criticism but.... Why in the world could he never break out of this pattern with Elmer, the constant baiting? He loved his son. Why couldn't he just.... "I know." He said quietly as he looked at Hook. "It's just Lona leaving like this and Elmer.... Do you think she might have left just to get away from him?"  
  
Louis didn't want to think that and he knew that there was definitely plenty of evidence to suggest something else had happened with Lona but that didn't ease his worry.  
  
"Louis, can you honestly see Lona running away from Elmer and leaving her lab and all of her stuff behind?" Chris said with a shake of her head. Okay, she had been a bit afraid of that herself at first but she had quickly gotten over it. Lona would have been more likely to report Elmer to Hook or even worse to his father if things got to serious.  
"Louis, there's no way she would do that. You know Lona. If Elmer was giving her a real problem, she would have either bopped him and told him off or came to you about it. She wouldn't have ran away."  
  
After Louis slowly nodded, Hook spoke. "So, where does that leave us?" What Chris had said made perfect sense and there was no way that he would believe that Lona had ran away from Elmer either. If they could just convince both Elmer and his dad of that now and get them working together.  
"Is there anyone that she might have gone away with, a boyfriend or something?"  
  
Chris shook her head. "Not unless she managed to conjure one up out of thin air. She's had a couple of doctors to escort her to several banquets but nothing that would count as a date in at least a year."  
  
Hook's eyes widened in surprise at that announcement but he somehow restrained himself from commenting, especially since he didn't know if Elmer might not be within hearing or not. "Okay, so a little time off for some romance is out. So what do we have? I'm going to assume that Elmer's right about her clothes being here. Where would she go without her clothes, not to mention her car?"  
  
"Have any of you been down to the ER today?" Louis said after several moments' thought. He hadn't checked there himself after seeing how crowded it was. "Maybe Elmer had the right idea? Henry did say that Lona looked pale and it was have to be serious for him to notice it. If she was sick...."  
  
Hook nodded. ER was definitely a possibility and since they were seriously packed at the moment, there was definitely a chance that an ill colleague could have been overlooked somehow. "We head back to the hospital then?" And if Lona wasn't in the ER, maybe she was in one of the lounges somewhere trying to sleep a sudden illness off?  
  
Louis and Chris nodded and the group moved into the hallway.  
  
"Elmer?" Hook called. We're heading back to the hospital. Think you might be onto something with that idea of yours about Lona being sick.  
We're going to check out the ER and see if they might have overlooked her."  
  
"Coming!" Elmer called as he came down the hallway carrying a small bag, the robe still in his hand. He had thought of the hospital himself and had been about to leave and head back there when Hook had mentioned it first. When he noticed everyone looking at the bag in his hands, he reddened slightly. "I just thought that Lona might need some fresh clothes if she was sick or something."  
  
Before Louis could say something and trigger another outburst,  
Chris broke in. "That's probably a good idea, Elmer, especially if she's been stuck in the ER all this time."  
  
Hook nodded his approval as well, holding the door open as he did so and motioning for the others to go out before him. He just hoped that they had some luck at the hospital. This entire situation was getting seriously worrisome. 


	9. Chapter 9

"Sonny!" Elmer called as he saw his friend at the far end of the hallway. Hook had decided that it would be better if they split up to check the hospital and see if Lona might be there somewhere sick.  
  
"Hey, Elmer. Where have you been?" Sonny asked. He really wanted to ask Elmer about the rumor that was circulating all over the hospital that Lona had resigned and left without a word but he didn't want to risk it. If it was true, he knew that Elmer wouldn't have taken the news well at all.  
  
"Looking for Lona. Have you seen her anywhere this morning?"  
Elmer asked anxiously. Hook and Chris were checking the ER and his dad had gone to check the lounges that Lona would have passed on her way out to her car. He tried to reassure himself that they would surely find her quickly now, but he couldn't force his worry away. What if something really bad had happened to her?  
  
"Lona?" Okay, Elmer had brought her up. Did that mean that it would be okay to ask his friend what had happened? "You know, Elmer, I heard the weirdest rumor about Lona a little bit ago. Someone said that she resigned and left town. Do you know what's going on with that?" Sonny didn't want to think that Lona would just leave without a word but Elmer had been more than a little persistent in his pursuit of her and after the head incident....  
  
"Some idiot practical joker left a note on Dr. James's desk saying she was resigning." Elmer said with an angry shake of his head. He wouldn't even let himself consider the possibility that the resignation letter could have actually been from Lona. If he let himself consider that, then he would have to also consider the fact that he might have driven her to leave and he couldn't deal with that. "Have you seen her anywhere? Her car's still out in the parking lot."  
  
"Really?" Okay, if Lona's car was still there, then that definitely lent a bit of credibility to Elmer's statement about the resignation thing being some sort of joke. What sort of idiot would do something like that, though? They had to know that Lona would kill them when she found out about it. Suddenly, something occurred to him. If the resignation was a joke, then why hadn't Lona shown up this morning? "Wait,  
if Lona didn't quit then where is she?"  
  
"We don't know." Elmer had to fight not to cry as he said that.  
The idea that Lona was missing was terrifying to him and his fear was increasing with each minute that passed without locating her. "Dr. Havens saw her last night and he said she looked kind of pale. We think she might have got sick or something."  
  
Sonny nodded. The hospital was definitely big enough that if Lona had been feeling ill, she could have very well laid down somewhere to try to rest and no one would have seen her. "You checked the sleep lab,  
right?"  
  
"It was the first place that we looked. We checked her house too and Chris and Hook are checking the ER in case she went down there." Elmer could barely force himself to stay still as he talked to his friend. All he wanted was to get back to searching for Lona once more. The more time that passed without finding her.... What if she was really sick and needed help quickly?  
  
"Yeah, the ER's packed. They definitely could have missed Lona if she dozed off or something in there," Sonny said with a shake of his head.  
"Want me to help you look for her?"  
  
"Could you? Please?" The more people that were looking for Lona,  
the better the odds were that they would find her quickly and if she was really sick, well, then wouldn't it be better if she had lots of people there to tend to her?  
  
"Okay, why don't I go downstairs and check some of the labs? If Lona wasn't feeling well, she might have went into one of them to rest for a bit and fell asleep or something." Sonny hoped this didn't show in his tone but a bit of a worry was starting to form in his head. If Lona had been sick, wouldn't she have called someone for help if it was bad? The only reason that he could think of for her not calling for help was if she wasn't able to, if she was dead. He didn't dare mention that possibility to Elmer though, knowing it would send his friend right over the edge to think about Lona dying.  
  
After a moment, Sonny spoke once more. "Why don't you go and find Carrie, see if she'll check the ladies' rooms for you?" Okay, Carrie wasn't the person he would exactly want around in a crisis and if Lona was dead and they found her.... He shook his head as he thought of that,  
trying to reassure himself that the very idea was ridiculous. Lona was likely fine and fast asleep in a lounge someplace.  
  
Carrie. Would she be any actual help if Lona was really sick? It seemed like she spent most of her time on the floor in a faint. Someday,  
someone was probably going to use her for a doorstop. Still, though, she could go into the ladies' rooms and he didn't dare, not unless he wanted the police to come out to investigate him instead of Lona's disappearance.  
  
"I'll go find her. Thanks for the suggestion. I think." Elmer said after a pause.  
  
"Maybe you better snag some smelling salts before you ask Carrie to help!" Sonny called with a laugh. "Don't worry, Elmer. We'll find her.  
She's got to be around here someplace." 


	10. Chapter 10

"Carrie!" Elmer called as he hurried down the hall towards the rather nervous nurse. The more that he had thought about Sonny's suggestion to check the ladies' rooms for Lona, the more that he thought it was a good idea. If Lona had been sick, that would have been one of the few places she might have gone, right? Either there or to lay down. Of course, if she was in one of the ladies' rooms, then shouldn't she have came out by now? Unless the ladies had done a way better job than he had thought in getting Johnny B. Goode to do some work, then the public bathrooms weren't the place that you wanted to spend your night. If Lona was really sick though....  
  
"Carrie, wait!" Elmer called once more as panic started to grow at the though of Lona being ill. If she was too sick to call for help.  
Maybe he shouldn't have waited, should have tried to check some of those ladies' rooms himself. So what if someone called the cops? At least that might get them to take the situation with Lona more seriously! What if she really needed help and here they were not doing a thing because of some stupid rule?  
  
"Elmer, what's wrong?" Carrie asked as she turned, staring at the young doctor curiously. He definitely seemed to be seriously upset about something.  
  
"Carrie, you haven't seen Lona anywhere today, have you?" Elmer asked anxiously. It was obvious that the nurse's latest fainting spell had wiped her mind of his earlier request for information about Lona  
  
Lona, it figured that was what Elmer was upset about. Sometimes, it seemed like the only thing on Elmer's mind was Lona. Carrie shook her head slightly at that thought, grinning a bit as she did. She supposed that Elmer's single minded focus did explain some of the stupid things that he did, though. Suddenly her smile turned to a frown as she recalled the rumor she had heard earlier, that Lona had resigned. She had dismissed it as the usual stupid hospital gossip but now seeing the panic that Elmer seemed to be in along with the fact that he was looking for Lona.... Elmer seemed like he always knew where to find Lona, almost like he had tagged her with a tracking device.  
  
"Elmer, I heard the oddest rumor this morning," Carrie said slowly,  
watching carefully to see how he reacted. Okay, after the head incident,  
he deserved some sort of punishment but she didn't want to upset him too seriously. "People are saying that Lona...."  
  
"She didn't resign!" Elmer said in a firm tone. Oh, Lona was just going to love this when they found her, especially if Dr. James decided that the resignation was actually real and went looking for a replacement for her. After a moment, Elmer forced himself to calm down slightly. They had to find Lona, they just had to find her and then they could get everything fixed. If he let himself get freaked every time that someone mentioned that stupid resignation, it wasn't going to help things at all.  
"Carrie, will you please come and help me look for her?"  
  
"Look for her? What's going on?" Carrie asked as she followed Elmer down the hallway. Peds could wait for her for a little bit. From the way Elmer was acting, she was starting to feel a bit nervous for her friend.  
"Elmer, how do you know that she didn't resign?"  
  
"The letter was all wrong, for one thing, was in this flowery,  
romantic looking font that Lona would never use." Elmer said with a shake of his head. He wouldn't let himself even think about the vague possibility that Lona might have gotten fed up with him and quit. He didn't think he would be able to stand it if he thought about that. That just couldn't be what had happened! "And would Lona actually leave the sleep lab?"  
  
Okay, Carrie, had to agree with Elmer there. Lona was so focused on the lab and her research that she couldn't see her leaving them voluntarily. If Lona hadn't resigned though...  
  
"And her car's still in the parking lot. She wouldn't have left that here if she was quitting." Elmer's tone sounded slightly as if he was trying to convince himself as well as Carrie that Lona definitely couldn't have left.  
  
"What do you think happened then?" Carrie asked. That definitely did sound odd. Taxi service to the hospital was terrible, after all. How would Lona have gotten home without her car?  
  
"I don't know." Elmer said, his eyes filling with worry as he thought about it. "Lona was fine when I saw her last night. She was wanting me to meet her this morning so she could tell me about an experiment she had planned. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at all. Dr. Havens thought that she looked pale, like maybe she was sick when he saw her though."  
  
"I hope with just the flu and not what the cafeteria served for dinner last night." Carrie muttered under her breath. "So, what do you need me to do?"  
  
"Could you check the ladies' rooms for me and see if she might be in there? Sonny went to check some of the labs and my dad, Hook and Chris are checking the ER and the lounges she would have passed on her way out."  
  
"No problem." Carrie reached out and patted Elmer gently before motioning for him to follow her. Any anger she was still feeling towards him over the head incident had been firmly pushed aside for the moment.  
"We'll find her, Elmer. She's got to be around here someplace."  
Privately, though, Carrie was more than a bit worried. How could Lona just vanish unless something very serious had happened? 


	11. Chapter 11

Elmer felt like he was going to cry as he headed down the hallway towards his father, Chris and Hook. He and Carrie had searched what seemed like every bathroom in the hospital with no sign of Lona. He had even checked all of the men's rooms just to be sure. If Lona was really sick,  
after all, maybe she could have wandered into one of them accidentally.  
Nothing, though, and Carried had had to leave to help up on Peds. Where could Lona be? Elmer was barely able to keep the panic from overwhelming him now. Something had happened to her, he just knew it.  
  
"No sign of her?" Hook asked as he looked up and saw Elmer. The emergency room had been packed and he and Chris had only just managed to finish checking every nook and cranny of it. Lona could have definitely got overlooked down there especially if she fell asleep but there had been no sign of her. His worry was starting to slowly increase much as Elmer's was. Something was definitely off about this. Lona wouldn't just disappear. He looked over at Elmer for a moment before shaking his head firmly, forcing that thought resolutely away. No, no matter how much Elmer was pestering her, she wouldn't just vanish.  
  
"Carrie helped me check the bathrooms and Sonny went downstairs to check the unused labs in case she maybe wandered in and...." What if she was really sick, what if she had wandered off somewhere and.... They had to find her. Every fiber of Elmer's being was crying for him not to just stand there, to get busy searching for her but somehow he resisted. Where would he even look?  
  
"I couldn't find anything in the lounges either." Louis said as he shook his head as Hook and Chris both did as well. "Does anyone else have any ideas for where she could be?" Patient rooms? Maybe they ought to start checking the patient rooms? They were pretty full so he didn't see how Lona could have wandered into a room without being found quickly but.  
"What about the psych floor?"  
  
"Lona's not crazy!" Elmer almost shouted as he glared at his father. How could he have even suggested that....  
  
"I know that but the people up on psych aren't the best. Maybe she could have wandered into one of the rooms and they overlooked her." Louis firmly forced down annoyance at his son's reaction. Why did Elmer always jump to the conclusion that anything he said was some sort of criticism?  
  
"That's true." Hook said, a slightly bemused expression coming onto his face as he thought of the seeming idiots that they had in charge of the psych floor. Despite how Jesse had tried to cover it up as suicides, everyone knew that two patients had been murdered up there.  
  
"Hey!" Just then they heard a voice calling and looked up to see Sonny coming down the hallway with Dr. Havens right behind him. "Have you found Lona yet? I checked the labs that no one's using and there's no sign of her."  
  
"No, we haven't." Hook said. "Hey, Henry, it looks like you might have been the last person to see Lona. Did you notice anything, anything at all that might help us out here?"  
  
"Not really." Dr. Havens said with a shake of his head. Ever since he had talked to Louis and found out about what was going on with Lona, he had kept running his encounter with her the night before over and over in his mind searching for some sort of clue that he might have missed.  
"I've thought about it and thought about it but she just didn't say anything. We just basically passed in the hallway and said goodnight.  
That's all. The only thing I could think of is that she did look pale."  
He paused for a moment as he though of how Lona had appeared. "She was sweating a bit too, now that I think of it." he continued slowly. "I didn't think much of it at the time but...." If Lona was sick, though,  
where would she be?  
  
"Does anyone know if she has a private doctor or something?" Sonny asked. "If someone can give me a name, I could go and check that out. I don't have surgery with Stegman for a couple more hours." Surgery with Stegman. After working with that idiot in the OR for long enough, he was afraid his only job qualifications would be for the position of butcher.  
And he was a vegetarian too.  
  
"Dr. Fredricks over on 5 east," Louis said with a nod. That was a good idea. If Lona had been sick, maybe she had wandered over into the office area of the building. That might explain why she hadn't been found.  
Those sections were practically deserted at night.  
  
Sonny nodded and headed off down the hallway. Okay, at first he had thought that maybe Lona was trying to get away from Elmer but with how everyone else was reacting, he just didn't like the way this thing was looking.  
  
"Hey, no sign of Lona?" Carrie called as she came down the hall with one of the other nurses, Liz, behind her.  
  
"Nothing." Chris said with a shake of her head.  
  
"Well, I was telling Liz what's going on and she had an idea."  
Carrie said.  
  
"You know, there are a couple of free clinics in the area." Liz said. She had heard the rumors about Lona, of course, but hadn't believed them. Hearing what Carrie had told her about what the others believed had happened made much more sense. "If Lona didn't have on her lab coat for some reason, no one would likely connect her to the hospital. It's possible if she was sick last night and wandered off that someone saw her and took her to one of those places. Would you like me to check?"  
  
Elmer's eyes widened as he listened to Liz. It had never occurred to him that Lona might have left the hospital, that she could be wandering the streets somewhere where who knows what could happen to her. He felt himself slightly hyperventilating as he thought about it. If Lona was on the streets lost and sick....  
  
"Elmer, I know a lot of those people from working with Reverand Jimmy. They wouldn't hurt Lona." Liz said firmly but gently. "Do you want me to check? I can get the people from the mission to help too. If she did wander off, if anyone could find her, it would be them."  
  
"Good idea." Hook said as he nodded in agreement to Liz's suggestion. "As for the rest of us, all I can think of is to take the building from top to bottom and look for her. There has to be something in here somewhere that will help us. Lona couldn't have just disappeared without a trace." 


	12. Chapter 12

Elmer trudged down the hall towards the meeting room the next morning having to fight to keep his eyes open. He hadn't been able to make himself go home the night before. What if someone had found Lona and she was really sick and needed attention? Okay, he knew that Hook would be there, Hook was always there. The only think that Elmer could figure about Hook always being there was that he must have took the title resident a little too seriously or something and moved in all of his stuff years ago.  
Why else would someone live at their job?  
  
He had went down to the sleep lab the night before to try sleep,  
thinking that being close to some place so important to Lona, the last place that he had seen her might help. It hadn't done any good though and he had just tossed and turned for hours, Lona's robe pressed to his face,  
without ever being touched in the slightest by sleep. Where was she? What if something had happened to her, something bad? Horrible images had been running through his mind, steadily growing worse with each passing minute that she didn't turn up.  
  
"Elmer, you okay?" Hook asked as he saw the younger doctor come in. Okay, the answer to that question was pretty easy to guess. He thought Elmer was still wearing the same clothes that he had had on the day before and it looked like he had sleep in them.  
  
"Would you be okay if Chris was missing?" Elmer replied. Okay, he knew that was a bit harsh to say but.... "Hasn't anyone found anything let?" He asked Hook anxiously. He had told Otto to page him if Lona came in but....  
  
"Liz has the people from the mission looking and as soon as the meeting's over, Chris and I are going to check some more places, see if we can figure out where she might have went." Hook had already contacted some of the other hospitals in the area, calling down to Portland as well and letting them know the situation, calling in favors with some friends to get them to keep their eyes open for Lona. This entire situation was just too strange and the longer that it continued, the more concerned he was getting.  
  
Louis looked over, glad to see that Hook was talking to Elmer as he entered. Louis wanted to go over to his son, to try to comfort him, but after how upset Elmer had been the day before, he was a bit afraid to. He didn't want to upset Elmer even more. He shook his head as he though of both his son and Lona. He had drove around the town for hours after he got of shirt just looking for her but there had been nothing.  
  
"Hello!" Jesse called as he breezed into the room with Stegman and Brenda just behind him. He frowned slightly as he saw the gloomy expressions on everyone's faces. Now this wasn't the way he liked to see his doctors look at all. Worried, gloomy looking doctors did not make for happy patients and repeat business. "Haven't we all had our fresh Morning Air this morning?"  
  
"No, we've been a little too busy looking for Lona." Hook said with a shake of his head.  
  
"I looked outside. Her car's still there. Does that count for Morning Air?" Elmer asked.  
  
"Ahhhh, the situation with Dr. Massingale." Dr. James frowned slightly himself as he thought about it. Okay, something did seem definitely off about the entire thing but he really didn't want to make too much of it. It would draw unpleasant attention down on the hospital if people thought that they had staff just vanishing, after all.  
  
After a moment, he made a decision. Best for the hospital as a whole if they just took the resignation at face value and moved on. "Yes,  
I know that we all miss Dr. Massingale tremendously. I'm sure that she's very happy in her new endeavors, though. And her departure will benefit several other projects as well." As he spoke, he looked over from Hook to Stegman trying to decide what move was best. Stegman was a pain and hadn't been there long. And with how he kept repeatedly goofing up surgeries,  
Jesse didn't think he would remain much longer either. Hook, on the other hand.... "It seems Dr. Massingale had a grant arrive this morning, 50,000 in funding for research. However, with her sudden departure, that money will need to be rerouted to active projects. Dr. Draper, I'm sure you'll make good use of it."  
  
Chris was still in shock when the meeting broke up a few minutes later. Fifty thousand dollars. Lona had always managed to net more funding than Chris ever could. Chris didn't think she had ever received that much money at once. Normally she would be squealing with glee and dragging Hook downstairs to celebrate in private but considering how she had gotten the money. As Elmer exited the room, he turned and glared at her suspiciously. Suddenly, Chris thought she might be in a bit of trouble. 


	13. Chapter 13

Chris looked after Elmer as he hurried away, her worry slowly building before turning to Hook. "He thinks I did something to Lona."  
  
"Chris, Elmer's freaked right now." And Hook supposed that he couldn't really blame him. If it had been Chris that was missing, he was sure that he would be reacting as badly or worse. The idea of Elmer suspecting Chris did rankle with him but he did his best to push that feeling aside. Getting upset with the young man wouldn't help the situation any.  
  
"He thinks that I...." Chris wasn't sure what to say. She couldn't in all honestly say that she didn't care about the money. With how poorly funded her research was and now with how Stegman kept rerouting all of her requests to other departments, she definitely needed it. If there was one thing that Chris had always envied Lona for it was her ability to get funding for the sleep lab. Now that that money was hers,  
though.... It just felt wrong, like she was stealing it or something.  
Lona had only been gone 24 hours, after all. How could Jesse just give away her hard earned project funding?  
  
"Chris, this isn't your fault. Don't let it get to you, okay?"  
Hook said as he reached out, drawing her into his arms as Stegman and Brenda both glared at them. He didn't care though. Chris was way more important than worrying about keeping the hospital peace.  
  
"If I didn't take the money, who do you think Jesse would give it to?" Chris asked quietly.  
  
"You're thinking about turning it down?" Hook said carefully,  
making sure that his voice didn't betray a hint of his thoughts on which way she could go with the money. Chris worked hard and she deserved to have her research finally rewarded but at the same time he definately knew that the situation was very awkward for her with Lona's disappearance.  
  
"I only got it because Lona disappeared." Chris said quietly. "It isn't like it was something that I earned, you know." As she thought about it, she felt her anger with Jesse starting to build up. "How can he give away Lona's money anyway?" Okay, so she got annoyed with how Lona seemed to rake in so much funding sometimes, had even made a few catty remarks in a fit of anger once that Lona had to be sleeping with someone at the top to get what she did. If she looked at it reasonably though, she knew that everything that Lona got was due to pure hard work and nothing else. And as a fellow researcher it definitely rankled to see Lona losing something she had earned through what appeared to be no fault of her own. "Why's Jesse giving up on Lona coming back so soon anyway?" A bit of suspicion of her own started to creep into her voice as she thought about it. Jesse knew that there were some odd things going on with Lona's disappearance so why was he seemingly accepting the resignation at face value?  
  
"You know Jesse. He always likes to keep the hospital running smoothly and no bad publicity. If word gets out that one of the doctors has vanished...." Hook said with a shake of his head.  
  
"True. So, who do you think he would give the money to if I don't take it. I really don't think I can. It's like admitting that Lona isn't coming back and she's only been gone 24 hours. That's just to early for me to give up on her." Chris said. Okay, she hated losing the money but it was just money. She could always try for funding that would be her own later.  
  
"I hate to say it but he would probably give it to either Stegman or Brenda." Hook said with a grimace. He wouldn't tell Chris what to do or try to influence her decision in any way, though.  
  
"And Lona would die if Steg got his hands on her money." Chris shook her head as she thought of how Lona would take that piece of news.  
"Will you come help me find Elmer? I need to talk to him. He knows Lona and her research, Maybe I ought to let him decide what to do about the money." 


	14. Chapter 14

Elmer moved around the lab, not really sure of what he was doing but having to keep moving all the same. He slowly straightened the beds before moving to the pile of files lying on the desk. Lona would have never left files out if she wouldn't be back for them. What was it going to take to make people realize that something serious was going on here,  
that Lona hadn't just left?  
  
Then there was what Jesse had just done, taking away Lona's funding and dumping it in Chris's lap. Okay, if he forced himself to calm down a bit, he knew that the entire funding mess wasn't Chris's fault and he really had no reason to be suspicious of her. He just hoped she hadn't noticed the way that he had looked as he had left the meeting. If there was anyone who called for suspicion, it was Jesse in his giving Lona's money away like that. He had to know that when Lona came back and found out about it, she would explode. Unless he knew that Lona wouldn't be returning, unless he was to blame for her disappearance.  
  
Elmer was still pondering that slowly when he heard footsteps and turned just as his dad entered the lab.  
  
"What are you doing down here?" Louis asked, keeping his tone as gentle as he could, not wanting to trigger another argument. Hook had been right about them doing no good and especially now with the situation with Lona, he knew they needed to work together if they were going to find her.  
  
"Straightening up. When Lona gets back she'll be really mad if the lab isn't in order." Okay, Jesse had ordered the lab closed the day before but no way was Elmer going along with that. Lona would never forgive him if he did. "You don't have to stay here and watch me, you know. I'm not so stupid that I don't know how to put some files in order."  
  
"I know you're not." Louis said. "I saw where you stayed here last night."  
  
"I wanted to be here if someone found her." Elmer closed his eyes for a moment before continuing to speak. "I thought if she was sick or hurt then she might feel better if she had someone with her if they brought her in."  
  
Louis smiled slightly at that reply. Honesty, did Lona have any idea how much Elmer cared for her, that his affections were so sincere?  
Okay, Louis had been a but annoyed with his son, worried that Elmer bothering Lona might have driven her to leave but after having a night to consider it, he was how totally unlikely that was. If only Lona would give him a chance instead of focusing so much on Elmer's age. "Would it be alright if I stay tonight too?"  
  
"Why?" Elmer asked suspiciously. Didn't his father trust him near Lona even with an emergency room full of people around them?  
  
"She's my friend too. I'd like to be there if she needs help."  
And if Lona was sick or hurt, Louis was determined to be there for his son as well. He reached out and picked up some of the closest files. "Want some help straightening things up for her?"  
  
Elmer looked suspiciously at his father, trying to gauge if he were sincere or not. Elmer wanted to believe that he was yet at the same time he couldn't help but be more than a bit suspicious, his natural reactions to his dad and his fear of rejection still so strong.  
  
Before he could say anything, he heard footsteps once more and a moment later, Hook and Chris came in. "Elmer?" Chris said as she cautiously approached, a bit nervous that Elmer would lash out at her.  
Okay, she knew that she hadn't done anything to deserve it but still, she definitely felt guilty none the less.  
  
Chris wouldn't let herself think about how badly she needed the funding anymore. She knew what she had to do about the situation.  
"Listen, Elmer, about that funding, I had no idea that Jesse was going to give that to me and I don't want it." Okay, that wasn't totally true but the part of her that was rational definitely agreed with it. Taking money just because Lona was missing was just totally wrong. "If I don't take it though, Stegman's going to get it and you know once he gets his hands on it that Lona's never going to be able to get it back when she comes home."  
Chris motioned for Hook to stay quiet as she spoke. The more she said, the more she was definitely sure that this was the right thing to do. "So, I was thinking that maybe once Jesse transfers the money, you could take it and hold onto it until Lona comes back. Would that be alright?" She definitely wanted the money out of her hands before it could prove too tempting.  
  
"You want me to...." Well, Lona would probably be more okay with him watching the money than for Stegman to get his hands on it but still,  
fifty thousand was a lot of money.  
  
"I can't think of anyone who would take care of it for Lona better." Chris said with a gentle smile. Okay, she wasn't sure how her friend would react when she found out what Chris had done but this decision just felt right. And who knows, maybe it would do something to change Lona's opinion of Elmer if she could see him showing some responsibility.  
  
"If we've got that settled," Hook said as he put a supportive hand on Chris's shoulder. He knew giving up the money had to have been hard for her but he did agree it was the right thing to do as long as it could be kept out of the reach of Stegman. "I have some ideas for what we can do to look for Lona." They had searched everywhere in the hospital they could think of and Liz's friends were searching the streets. Maybe it was time to expand things a bit more beyond the hospital. "I want to see about checking the buses that run through here. See if anyone might have seen her. If Lona isn't here, she had to have left somehow." It was just a matter of figuring out how.  
  
"I'll go and check with Otto and Liz too. See if they might know of anyone who was here the night Lona disappeared and who hasn't been back on since." Louis offered. "If she was sick, it's possible that someone offered her a ride and just doesn't know yet about the situation here." He wasn't sure how that would be possible with how well the hospital gossip system seemed to work. Surely even if someone was on their day off, they would have heard about Lona's disappearance. They needed to check it out none the less, though. Before he headed for the door, he reached out and reassuringly patted Elmer's shoulder. "We're going to find her. I promise that we're going to find her." 


	15. Chapter 15

Elmer sat in a chair in the sleep lab, barely able to hold back tears as he listened to Hook talk on the phone, the answers that he was receiving obviously weren't positive from the way he was replying. He shook his head, trying to keep himself from breaking down. He knew it wouldn't help Lona if he did, would only make his father sure that he was the loser that he had always thought but he was just so scared. Where could Lona be? It had been over twenty four hours since she had disappeared. Surely if there was some sort of innocent explanation for her absence, it would have surfaced by now! As he thought about the situation all of the things that he had seen on old tv shows and news specials about women being abducted, being tortured, being... No, if anyone ever did anything like that to Lona.... He couldn't hold back the tears as he thought of someone hurting her in that way.  
  
"Elmer, it's going to be okay. We're going to find her. I promise you that we're going to find her." Louis said gently as he moved over to join his son. He didn't even have to ask what Elmer had just been thinking about. The same images had been haunting him all night and the longer that Lona was missing, the more he feared that something like what he kept thinking of might turn out to be the case, If something like that had happened to Lona.... The scenarios of someone kidnapping her and harming her physically were bad enough but if she had been.... Lona always seemed so strong and self confident but honestly Louis wasn't sure how much of that was actually Lona and how much of it was a role that she had played for so long that she didn't know how to be any different now. If someone had.... He couldn't even bring himself to think the word as if thinking it would make it happen. He was afraid that if that had happened to Lona,  
though, the damage, the being shaken so badly, could totally destroy her.  
And then there was how Elmer would take it. Louis knew he shouldn't be worrying about that, not really, should focus on Lona alone but he couldn't help but worry about his son. He knew that any injury that Lona suffered would upset Elmer, of course, but if she had been.... After a moment, he finally allowed himself to think it, if she had been raped, then it would devastate Elmer. Okay, Louis knew he had definitely made mistakes with his son big time but he had no desire to see Elmer have to go through something like that. Lona had to be alright, both for her own sake and for Elmer's.  
  
"Called the bus companies. None of them run this way that late at night. Something about weird things happening on this route. Couldn't get a driver to do the late run." Hook said with a shake of his head as he hung up the phone. "So we know that Lona couldn't have left that way."  
  
"Then where is she?" Elmer demanded, brushing away tears and hoping that no one saw them.  
  
"I don't know, Elmer, but I'm going to find out. It's been over twenty four hours and it's more than a little obvious that something strange is going on here. Maybe the cops will be a little more interested now. I'm going to give them another call." Hook said as he picked up the phone once more. And after he made that call, he decided, he was going to go upstairs to talk to Mrs. Druse. He couldn't believe he was thinking this and definately wouldn't have been only a short time before but maybe her spirits could help them out.  
  
"The police should have came yesterday." Elmer muttered under his breath. "Who knows what could have happened to Lona by now?"  
  
"Elmer, we're going to find her. Just settle down, okay?" Hook said just as the phone was picked up. "Yes, hello, this is Doctor Hook over at Kingdom Hospital. I called yesterday about a little situation that we seem to be having. One of our doctors seems to have disappeared. Her car's still in the parking lot and when we checked her house, all of her things are still there. Right, yes there was a resignation letter but it was unsigned and there's nothing that would show that she actually left it.  
Another doctor took a look and noted some inconsistencies in the...." He paused for a moment, listening. "Yes, I'll tell him and we'll be expecting you."  
  
"Well, what did they say?" Elmer demanded anxiously.  
  
"They're on their way over. They want to talk to Otto since he's in charge of security and to Dr. James. I have to go and let them know."  
Just as Hook stood, Chris came in. "Hey, Chris, did you find out anything?"  
  
"I found out that our work hours were insane, as if I didn't already have a clue about that." She said with a shake of her head. "No one's had time off in weeks, much less yesterday and today. What about the buses?"  
  
"Nothing. The police are on their way. I've got to go talk to Otto and let him know they're coming. Then I thought I might check with Mrs. Druse, see if there's anything that she can do."  
  
"Mrs. Druse? She's that psychic that Stegman's so freaked about,  
right?" Psychic? Elmer felt panic, even stronger than before, washing over him. Didn't psychics communicate with the dead or something? "You think that Lona's...." NO! She couldn't be! She just couldn't be!  
  
"Mrs. Druse is a smart lady. She sees a lot more than you expect."  
Louis said before Hook could step in. "Maybe she'll be able to think of something that we're missing." He reached out, putting what he hoped Elmer would take as a comforting arm around his son's shoulder. "Come on. Why don't we go and make the rounds of the floors again, see if anyone's seen anything. Let's leave Chris and Hook to get ready."  
  
"Hook, you don't think that Lona maybe is.... Well, you know."  
Chris said slowly as soon as she was sure that Louis had Elmer out of earshot.  
  
"I don't know." Hook said with a shake of his head. "All I do know is that we have to find her and the sooner the better. Come on. I want to have some time to talk to Mrs. Druse before the police get here and things go crazy." He just hoped that she would be able to do something to help them find Lona quickly. 


	16. Chapter 16

"Just wanted to let you know that the police are on their way over." Hook called a bit later as he poked his head into Jesse's office.  
Hopefully the head of the hospital would take the news a bit better than Otto had. When he had given the security guard the news that the police were coming and would be wanting to talk to him, Otto had promptly fell into a panic, sure that he was about to be accused of incompetence for letting a doctor vanish when he was supposed to be guarding them. It had taken forever to get him calm once more.  
  
"Police? Why are the police on the way over?" Jesse certainly hoped they weren't coming to investigate those cuts of meat that he had arranged to purchase from his brother Frank to cut down on the hospital food budget. He was sure that his brother had obtained them in a perfectly legal manner. No one needed to know about the small little incident where his brother was thrown out of culinary school. "If it's about that little incident with the meatloaf from a few days ago the let me reassure you as I have reassured everyone else that...."  
  
"No, they're coming about Lona's disappearance." Hook said with a shake of his head. Suddenly he was very glad that he never ate in the staff cafeteria. Was that maybe what had happened to Lona?  
"Dr. Massingale? Why would the police be coming about her? As I've told everyone, she resigned for a new opportunity that suddenly opened up. I understand that everyone will miss her but we must focus on the future now and..."  
  
"Her car's in the parking lot, he stuff's in her house and she asked Elmer to come by the lab that morning to talk to him about an experiment. I don't buy that Lona resigned." Hook had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes at Jesse as he spoke. Honestly, he was either a bigger idiot than everyone thought he was or else he was trying to cover up something. Cover up something? Could that maybe be it? Jesse was trying awfully hard to convince everyone that Lona's resignation was for real.  
Maybe he was trying a little too hard.  
  
You know, the police seemed like they were taking Lona's disappearance seriously this time so if you should happen to know something about where she is, you might want to let someone know now. Before they get here." Hook said in a pointed tone.  
  
"Now why would I know anything about Dr. Massingale's resignation?  
Honestly, you're taking this much too seriously, Hook. All of you are. I can understand young Elmer, of course, with the feelings that he had for Dr. Massingale but...." Jesse shook his head. No, Lona resigned and he wasn't going to let himself think anything other than that. "We all should be wishing her well in her new endeavors."  
  
Hook did roll his eyes this time. "Well, that will be up to the police to decide, now won't it? And the one I talked to today didn't much like the theory about her resigning with no notice and all of her things still here so you better get yourself ready for some questions. And you better get that note out too. They're going to want to take it with them most likely."  
  
"How did it go with Jesse?" Chris asked as she saw Hook exiting the head of the hospital's office, a grimace on his face, not a really surprising expression though. Most of the doctors who were forced to talk to Jesse usually looked like that afterwards.  
  
"He's in total denial that anything happened to Lona. Keeps insisting that she just resigned." Hook said with a shake of his head. He paused for a moment before continuing. What were the odds that Jesse would be clever enough to do something like this, after all? It would explain things very well if it was the correct assumption, though. "Chris, do you think Jesse might know more than he's telling? He's pushing the idea that Lona resigned way too hard."  
  
"You think he did something to her? Hook, I can't see Jesse actually hurting...."  
  
"No, I don't think he would purposely hurt someone either but if Lona got sick or something, say from the cafeteria food or if she had an accident because of poor maintance...." The two moved into a nearby lounge as they talked, needing definite privacy.  
  
Chris didn't speak immediately, running what Hook had said over in her mind. Jesse was so obsessed with the hospital's image. If something had happened to Lona and he thought it could result in the hospital appearing in an unfavorable light.... "If that's true, though, then where is she? Jesse couldn't hide her for long. He's not smart enough."  
"I know. I think after I talk to Mrs. Druse we better check the basement again. That's where this entire thing got started. If Lona's had an accident or something, it's going to be down there." 


	17. Chapter 17

"Hey, Mrs. Druse!" Hook called as he stepped off of the elevator followed by Chris.  
  
"Dr. Hook, could I ask what's going on?" Sally asked with a worried expression on her face. Since the morning before, she had noticed that the staff had seemed tense, like they were worried about something and it seemed that the tension was growing. She had even felt it when she tried to reach out to the little lost spirit of the hospital. Little Mary was definitely extremely agitated.  
  
"We have a minor little situation on our hands." Hook said with a shake of his head. I wasn't sure this was exactly the best thing to do.  
After all, Lona had only been missing a short time and it felt a tiny bit like giving up to be turning to the spirits to try to locate her, like he was thinking that Lona might be amongst them now. He honestly didn't see how he couldn't ask Mrs. Druse for help, though. Lona deserved for them to try every possible avenue to find her, no matter how strange. "You know Dr. Massingale, right?"  
  
"Of course." Sally said with a nod. "She's very nice. Not much of a believer in the supernatural, of course, but very nice and a good doctor. Has something happened to her?"  
  
"That's the problem." Chris said. "Lona's missing. No one's seen her since the night before last and someone left a note in Dr. James's office saying that she resigned."  
  
"The type doesn't match what Lona uses though, and her car's still down in the lot. And her stuff's still in her house." Hook continued.  
"We've searched everywhere for her and so far we're getting nowhere. About all that we know is that when Lona left, she was looking like she might be starting to get sick with something." Hook paused for a minute, debating with himself, before continuing. "Listen, could I get you to do something for us? I don't know how you usually do them or if it would even help in this case but if you would consider doing some sort of séance, trying to find out what in the world happened to Lona...." No, he firmly told himself, asking for a séance was NOT giving up on Lona. They knew the hospital was haunted by little Mary. They needed to ask anyone who might have seen anything for help so it was only common sense for them to turn to Sally for assistance in contacting Mary. Possibly the little girl might have seen something.  
  
"Of course, anything to help." Sally said as she looked at Hook with concern. "Have you contacted the police?"  
  
"They're on their way." Suddenly Hook looked up as he heard his name being called over the intercom. "And it looks like they're here now.  
Listen, I have to go but just let me know what help you need for the séance, okay? We really appreciate this."  
  
"Do you think a séance might really help?" Chris asked as soon as the elevator doors shut. Okay, she knew that Hook had seen some weird things here and she was far from a skeptic but still....  
  
"Nothing else has worked so far. Why not give it a try, especially if the police don't find anything? Maybe that little ghost girl saw something. It seems like she really gets around the hospital after all."  
A few minutes later, they stepped off the elevator and entered the lobby. Hook was pleased to see that two plain clothes detectives were with Otto this time instead of the officers that the local police department usually sent them.  
  
"Dr. Hook, this is Detective Ryan and Detective Rogers of the Lewiston Police Department." Otto felt slightly relieved when he saw the doctor approaching. Although they hadn't said anything, the simple presence of the officers was making him feel that he had totally failed at his job. Not that he didn't already feel that way, of course, especially with the situation with Lona. How could she have just vanished without a trace?  
  
"Gentlemen, I'm Dr. Hook and this is Dr. Draper. I'm the one who called you about Dr. Massingale's disappearance. Would you like to go somewhere more comfortable so I can tell you what we know?" Hook asked as he faced the two detectives, holding out his hand for each to shake in turn.  
  
"Yes, and then we will be wanting to see the note that was left."  
Detective Rogers, the senior officer said. "We'll need to take it for printing. Also, we'll need to set up interviews with any of your staff that might have seen Dr. Massingale on the night in question."  
"We understand that you're running a hospital and we'll try to be as discrete as possible." Detective Ryan added. "We do need to talk to everyone who had contact with Dr. Massingale, though. The smallest clue,  
something someone might not even realize they have, could be vital to finding her."  
  
"Of course." Hook said with a nod as he motioned for the officers to follow him to the elevator. He paused for a moment before deciding where to take them. "We'll take you to Dr. James's office for the letter and then you can conduct your interviews there. We're all very concerned about Dr. Massingale's welfare. We just want her found as soon as possible and well. They had to find Lona. That was all there was to it. If they didn't find Lona, he didn't know how he would break it to Elmer. They had to find her. 


	18. Chapter 18

Jesse stood as Hook entered followed by the police. Ever since Hook's announcement that he had contacted the police over Lona's disappearance, he had been debating the best way to handle the situation.  
Obviously at this point denial that anything was unusual about Lona's sudden departure wasn't going to work any longer. And if he had to admit it to himself, he knew that there was something off about the resignation letter. He just couldn't understand how it could have ended up in his office if it wasn't genuine, though. Surely no one would play such a mean joke on Dr. Massingale.  
  
"Dr. James, these are Detectives Ryan and Rogers. They're here about the situation with Dr. Massingale." Hook told him. He just hoped that Jesse would finally start taking this seriously and not try to downplay it. They needed as much help as they could get to find Lona.  
  
"Yes, the situation with Dr. Massingale. The more I think about it, the more I've begun to feel a bit concerned as well." Jesse said with a serious look. Okay, he normally tried to cover up stuff to protect the hospital but if something serious had happened to Lona and with how long she had been gone without contacting someone, he could only assume that it had.... Best to do everything that he could to aid the police. Surely they would find out what had happened quickly so things could return to normal.  
  
"You'll be wanting the note, of course." Jesse said as he fumbled around in his desk for a moment before extracting the paper. "I do hope that you can bring this to a conclusion swiftly. Very disconcerting matter."  
  
"How many people have handled this, do you know?" Detective Rogers asked as he extracted a bag from his coat pocket and slipped the note inside.  
  
"Probably anyone who was at the staff meeting." Jesse said with a frown. Maybe he should have been a bit more careful with the note, he was thinking, now, but at the time he had just taken it at face value and had been focusing on his annoyance with Dr. Massingale for leaving him in the lurch. "Dr. Hook, did you notice who might have handled the note?"  
  
"No idea. We were a little in shock about Lona." Hook said,  
shaking his head as he spoke.  
  
Well, that would complicate things slightly if there turned out to be foul play involved, both officers knew. "Tell me, why do you think the note isn't genuine?" Detective Ryan asked.  
  
"You really have to know Lona to understand but the entire thing with the sudden resignation just is totally out of character for her."  
Hook told them. "Lona's a dedicated researcher and for her to just suddenly leave her work like this just doesn't make sense. Also, she had an appointment set up with one of the other doctors for the morning we first found out she was gone and she had several research grants that were due to come in as well. For her to just leave like this doesn't fit with her character at all. Also, there's the font that the note is written in.  
Two of our other doctors who work frequently with Lona pointed this out.  
The note's in a font that almost looks handwritten and is a bit hard to read. Lona typically uses plain fonts, nothing like this. Also, her car's still down in the parking lot and when we checked her house, everything was still there, clothes and all. This just doesn't fit."  
  
The officers were silent for a moment, both going over the proper procedures for a situation like this in their heads before speaking.  
"We'll need to set up interviews. Do you know the last place she was seen and by whom?" Detective Rogers asked.  
  
"Dr. Havens was the last person to see Lona. He said she looked a bit pale like she might be sick. That's one of the reasons we're so concerned about her. That was down in the basement. Elmer, Dr. Elmer Traff," Hook mentally laughed as he thought of the goofy younger doctor actually being a sort of full fledged doctor, "he was the person who saw her before that down in the sleep lab. I'll be happy to show you."  
  
"I'd like to go down there and take a look." Detective Rogers said as he stood. "In the meantime, I'll need you to put together a list of anyone who might have seen or spoken to Dr. Massingale in the days leading up to her disappearance. We'll need to speak to all of them."  
  
"That would be pretty much the entire neurosciences team." Jesse shook his head slightly as he thought of that. Steg definitely was not going to be pleased when he got contacted for an interview by the police due to a missing co-worker. "I'll see what I can do. Everyone should be here today." One benefit of his new policy on time off anyway.  
  
"Good. We'll start the interviews as soon as we check out the basement. Doctor, if you'll show us the way?" Detective Rogers said,  
motioning for Hook to take the lead. 


	19. chapter 19

Elmer signed with relief when he saw Hook heading down the hallway for the sleep lab with who he could only assumed were two police officers behind him. Surely once the police got involved in the matter, they would be able to find Lona quickly. He quickly pushed away the thought of the cops not being able to find her and what that might mean if they couldn't.  
They had to find her. They just had to. He wasn't going to let himself think of anything else but them finding her safe and sound. Maybe he had been wrong about Lona not having any relatives? Maybe some obscure one called out of nowhere needing help and Lona had had to take a few days off or something. He knew all too well what would have happened if she left a memo for Jesse on his desk. And if she tried to email something.... He didn't think that Jesse had checked his email in the last six months.

"Hook!" Elmer called, starting down the hallway towards them. He wanted to be as involved as he could be, do anything that he could to help them find Lona and get her home where she belonged as quickly as possible.  
He couldn't just stand around doing nothing like some people were doing.

"Hey, Elmer. This is Detective Rogers and Detective Ryan." Hook had been hoping that Elmer would stay away for a bit, wanting to give the police a chance to check out things without the young doctor's attempts to help them in some way but it didn't look like that would be happening now.  
And, when he really thought about it, could he blame Elmer for how he was acting? He didn't even want to imagine what sort of shape he would be in if Chris was the one who had suddenly vanished. There was no way that he would be content to stay on the sidelines if he was in Elmer's position.

"You're Elmer Traff?" Detective Ryan asked as he consulted his notes for a moment, taking in the bathrobe that Elmer was clutching in his hands as he did so. He extracted a pen from his jacket pocket and made a short note before he spoke once more. "You were one of the last people to see Dr. Massingale. Is that correct?" He observed the younger doctor carefully as he spoke, exchanging looks with his partner.

Elmer nodded, misery apparent on his face as he thought of it, of the last time that he had seen Lona. "Two nights ago down in the lab." He said after a moment. Had it only been two nights ago? It felt like an eternity since he had seen Lona last. Was she okay? Was she somewhere safe and warm right now? He would never forgive himself if she came to any harm. "She had a new idea for some tests. She wanted me to stop by the lab before the staff meeting to talk to her about it." He should never have left Lona alone. He had slept in the lab plenty of times, after all.  
Why in the world hadn't he volunteered to sleep down there on that night?

"It's all my fault." he whispered brokenly as he thought about it. The one time that Lona had needed him, had been counting on him to help her,  
and he had failed her utterly. He should have stayed right there with her.  
Then this never would have happened. It was all his fault.

The two police officers looked at each other for a moment, trying to decide what they should do first. The lab definitely needed searched but the young doctor was obviously at a week and vulnerable point now.  
They knew from experience that if you wanted to get information out of a potential witness or suspect, the most vulnerable point was one of the best times to do it. When people weren't so upset they were more likely to think carefully about what they were saying, to weed out things that they felt were unimportant or possibly incriminating. "Why don't you come with us? We would like to take a statement if you don't have a problem with that." Detective Ryan said, making sure to move carefully with his approach. If it turned out that the young man was more than a witness, he wanted to make sure that anything he said could be used later.

"Whatever helps you find her." Elmer said, not noticing the way that the two detectives were looking at each other as well as him. "I just want you to find her." He had to struggle not to cry as he thought about the situation. Okay, he had definitely been upset and had realized how serious things were before but having the police here just seemed to hammer home exactly how serious things really were.

"I think the hospital maintence head would be willing to loan you his office for a bit." Hook told the officers. Considering how infrequently Johnny showed up for work, it wasn't like he could do anything even if he wasn't willing to loan them his office. "Right this way."

As soon as the office door closed behind Elmer and the officers,  
Louis turned to Hook, worry written clearly on his face. "Does Otto have a camera in there?"

"Probably. Why?" Hook said.

"I want to watch, see what's going on." Louis stared at the door for a moment before turning and heading for the elevator. He just hoped that he didn't miss anything critical while he was trying to get upstairs.

"You think they suspect Elmer of having something to do with this"  
Of course, now that Hook thought of it, it would make perfect sense for Elmer to be suspected, being one of the last people to see Lona and everything. He shook his head as he thought of it, not even letting the notion settle seriously into his brain. Okay, Elmer did dumb stuff to get Lona's attention but there was just now way that he would ever do anything to harm her.

"Did you see the way they were looking at him?" Louis said as the two men hurried into the elevator. "I just want to see what they're doing.  
Elmer's exhausted right now and totally freaked about Lona. Who knows what they could get him to say without realizing it?" No way was he letting anyone, law enforcement official or not, hurt his son! 


	20. chapter 20

"So, have you known Dr. Massingale long?" Detective Ryan asked Elmer as soon as the three were settled into chairs in Johnny's currently vacant office.

Had he known Lona long? It felt like he had known her forever, that she had occupied a special, deep spot in his heart forever. As Elmer thought about it, though, wanting to make sure to tell the police everything correctly, he was surprised to realize that his first memory of Lona was from the time of his brother's death.

"Five years, maybe." He said slowly. he supposed that before that he had just somehow missed her although for the life of him, he couldn't figure out how he had done that. "She worked with my dad for awhile before that."

"So, how would you describe Dr. Massingale?" Detective Ryan continued as his partner observed and took notes.

Describe Lona? How could mere words describe the love of his life?  
He knew he had to try, though, had to make the police see how special Lona was. Maybe that would help them to find her somehow. "Lona..." Elmer stopped for a moment and thought before continuing. He wanted to make them see somehow but he didn't know how he could best describe what made Lona so special. "She's brilliant." He finally said. "I don't think I've ever met anyone that's smarter than Lona. You should see all of the research that she's done." Would reminding them of the research help, make them definitely sure that Lona hadn't just walked off? "She's beautiful.  
She..." he stopped for a moment, not sure of how to best continue.  
Go on." Detective Ryan urged him.

"She.... I don't think that Lona really realizes how many people like her." Elmer knew that he wasn't explaining things the best but he didn't really think that an explanation was possible for this. It was really something that you either understood or you didn't. "She spends a lot of time working in the lab and that's nice and everything because she really, really is brilliant but she doesn't take a whole lot of time with people, to get to know them and stuff." Not like Elmer was really one to say anything bad about Lona being that way though. After all, he was pretty much the same way. "I don't think she really knows how many friends she really has." He should have talked to her, made her understand somehow how much he really understood instead of just pulling the stupid pranks that he did and flirting. "It's all my fault." he whispered.

"What's your fault?" Detective Rogers asked.

"I shouldn't have left. I've stayed in the lab overnight before"  
Elmer said slowly. "I ought to have stayed that night too. Then Lona would still be here, wouldn't be.... Well, nothing would have happened to her." He had to struggle to maintain control as he spoke, not wanting to burst into tears in front of the two cops. What if they decided that he was just a total loser than that Lona had done the smart thing by running away from him?

"So, you think that Dr. Massingale's disappearance was your fault because you didn't stay with her that night?" Detective Rogers could tell that his partner was still suspicious of the young man but he was becoming less concerned about him as time went on. His emotions just seemed to raw for him to be hiding something unless he was an incredible actor. "So,  
would you like to tell us about your relationship with Dr. Massingale?"

Elmer was quiet at that, not really sure how to describe things.  
"We work together." He said after a moment. "Lona and my dad are doing this thing with some sort of dreaming and I've been volunteering to be kind of a guinea pig for it." He went quiet once again, closing his eyes as he thought of the experiments and then Lona. "I love her."

"You love her? Could you explain that, please?" Detective Ryan asked. He knew from experience that many crimes of this nature were committed by someone that the person in question was close to. He could see that his partner was becoming a bit less suspicious but he still wasn't sure of the young man. "Were you involved in a personal relationship with Dr. Massingale?"

"I wish. I really wish." Elmer said softly. "She's just so smart and beautiful and.... She's Lona." He closed his eyes for a moment,  
trying to keep some sort of control. "She thinks I'm immature, that I just have a crush on her or something." That was all his fault, he knew. If only he had tried something else with Lona, had stopped with the constant pranks and flirting. It seemed like things had been working sort of well with the dinner in the morgue and all. How in the world did he let things fall apart to the point that he ended up sending Lona someone's head? What had he be thinking? "Please, you have to find her." They had to find her so that he could make things up to Lona, so that he could make things right. He knew that he could make her happy if he could just convince her to give him a chance.

"Do you know anyone that might wish Dr. Massingale ill?" Detective Rogers motioned for his partner to let him handle this. Maybe he was wrong but he just wasn't getting any bad feelings from this young man anymore.

"There's the guy in charge of the hospital computer network"  
Elmer said after a moment's thought. "Lona forgot her password for her email a couple of times. Honestly, she has so many important things on her mind, what's the big deal if one tiny little thing slips through occasionally. He gave her a hard time about it though and kept playing jokes on her, switching the password so she couldn't get in and thought she was loosing it." Maybe he ought to have told Lona what he had guessed about what was happening with the password but it had really been no big deal and he had felt kind of good when she had asked him for help. "I don't think he would hurt her though. He just want to bug her. And then there's Stegman." Did Stegman have anything against Lona? "On second thought, I don't think he really had a problem with Lona though. You might want to save him for your suspect list if anything ever happens to Hook,  
though."

Elmer could barely keep from crying now as the enormity of the situation hit him including the fact that he didn't have a clue as to what could have happened to Lona. "Please, you have to find her!" 


	21. chapter 21

Louis and Hook were crowded around the monitor in Otto's security booth, both watching intently as the two detectives talked to Elmer.

"I think it's okay." Louis said slowly after a few minutes'  
observation. Okay, the police officers had seemed like they might have been a bit suspicious of Elmer before but they certainly hadn't treated him in any manner that could have been considered poorly and although it looked like the younger officer still held a touch of suspicion, the older one seemed to be totally comfortable with what Elmer was telling them.  
Louis still wasn't thrilled with his son being suspected of anything for even a second, of course, but as long as they got it straightened out quickly and didn't upset Elmer in any way, he supposed he could deal with it. Now if they would just get busy and find Lona. Louis shook his head as he thought of the missing doctor, worry washing over him as images of some of the more graphic things he had seen in the ER flashed in his head at the thought of her. If anything serious had happened to Lona.... There had been one case in particular, a woman probably around Lona's age,  
kidnapped, tortured for days, brutally.... Had that ever been solved? He would have to find a chance to bring it up with the police, a time when Elmer wouldn't overhear and freak out totally. He didn't even want to think of how his son would react to the possibility that something like that could have happened to Lona. He knew he wasn't reacting well to the possibility himself, after all.

"Louis?" Hook asked quietly, seeing worry suddenly in the older doctor's eyes. this had to be hard on him, so soon after losing his former wife to maybe have lost and friend and then there was what had happened with his other son as well. "We're going to find her."

Louis nodded, willing himself to share Hook's confidence. "I'm just thinking that if.... You've been in the ER. You know some things that have happened." He didn't go into detail, able to see from Hook's expression that he knew the kinds of things that Louis was thinking of.

"If it's happened, we'll deal with it when we find her." Hook said quietly. The thought that something like some of the things that he had seen in the ER could have happened to Lona was definitely unnerving him as well but considering how long she had been missing at this point, he knew they had to look at that possibility. "Lona has plenty of friends here.  
If it has happened, she's going to have a ton of support to get her through it."

"I don't think she realized that, how many friends she had." Louis said softly, so quietly that Hook almost didn't hear him.

"Well, when we find her, we'll just have to show Lona if she didn't realize it." Hook told him. That thing about Lona not knowing how many friends she had bothered him, though. Was it possible that she could have actually left despite the evidence to the contrary, just assuming that no one would care or notice that she was gone? They were definitely going to have to have a long talk with Lona once they found her if that was so.  
Okay, she could be a bit prickly and obsessed with her research at times but Hook definitely considered her a friend and he knew Chris felt the same way along with many other people in the hospital.

"You don't think they still suspect Elmer, do you?" Louis asked quietly. "Because that boy would never, ever...."

"I know he wouldn't." Hook said with a shake of his head and then a slightly bemused smile as he thought of what Elmer had said. There hadn't been sound on the monitor, of course, but he had a bit of a talent for lip reading, developed when he had a professor back in med school that wouldn't speak up so the back row could hear, figuring missing the lesson was their punishment for not showing up bright and early. "Elmer said she was brilliant, you know, mentioned it before he said how beautiful she is."

"She is. Why wouldn't Elmer notice that?" Louis said with a shake of his head. Okay, maybe he did have a bad habit of thinking the worst of his son at times but did everyone else have to do it as well? Was it any wonder that the boy didn't seem to have any self esteem? Louis shook his head again as he thought of it. A bad father, although he had tried his best, had wanted to be better, he knew that as far as Elmer was concerned he was nothing but a bad father.

"Didn't say I was surprised." Hook said mildly. Honestly, he knew that Elmer wasn't really that bad. If he had thought so, he never would have tried to help him out with the dinner for Lona in the morgue. That stupid stunt with the head had to be just some sort of mental aberration,  
maybe triggered by.... Hook shook his head as he suddenly thought of something. The head thing happened soon after Elmer's mom died. Maybe that was what had triggered it, him wanting to win Lona by any means necessary before he lost her too? If so, was it really right for him to use the head to try blackmailing Elmer into helping to get the Klingerman anesthesiology report? Hook was definitely going to need to have a talk with the younger doctor and soon. First things first, though. They had to find Lona.

"Come on. We better go and take Elmer off the detectives' hands before he gets a bit paranoid and convinces them that the entire hospital might be plotting against Lona or something." Hook said with a slight laugh. "I want to see about talking to her doctor too, see if I can lean on him a little to get a look at her medical records. I know Elmer says she doesn't have any relatives she's close to but there would have to be a family history in there. Maybe he missed someone somehow."

"I don't think Elmer misses ANYTHING when it comes to Lona." Louis told Hook. He knew that looking at Lona's relatives was worth a try,  
though. Close or not, if she had gotten a call from a family member, maybe that could be responsible for her current absence. It was certainly much better than some of the possible scenarios that he had thought of.  
"Why don't you go and get Chris, see if she has anymore ideas too?  
I'll go and get Elmer." Louis told Hook. If talking to the police had upset his son, he wanted to give Elmer a bit of privacy, a chance to pull himself together without the worry of others watching him. Louis just hoped that they could get this fixed quickly. Lona had to be alright. 


	22. chapter 22

"Elmer?" Louis called for his son as he headed down the hallway and spotted his son trailing down the hall after the two detectives.  
"Elmer, come on. The detectives need some room to work."

With a resentful look at his father, Elmer moved away, heading back up the hallway to join Louis. Didn't his dad know that he needed to be there? What if the police found something in the lab and.... Would they even know what could be important in there? He needed to be there to help and....

"Elmer, just let them look it over for a bit on their own. I'm sure they'll ask you for your opinions later." Louis wished that Elmer would just understand that he certainly wasn't trying to hurt his son or interfere in any way. He just wanted to protect Elmer from any chance of being hurt. "Everyone knows how much time you spend down there and what a big help you've been to Lona with her experiments."

"Lona doesn't think that." Elmer whispered. And even if she ever had, she certainly hadn't after the incident with the head. He was just such an idiot that he couldn't believe it.

"Lona's just a little prickly, that's all." Louis said with a soft laugh. "Elmer, really, it's going to be alright." Louis said softly as she saw the expression on his son's face. He couldn't help but feel guilty for the problems his son had. Maybe if he had tried harder with Emma, not being so uncompromising after the drug scandal and her refusal to go into treatment, maybe if.... There wasn't any use in dwelling on that though.  
They couldn't change the past and right now they needed to be thinking about Lona and what in the world might have happened to her. "Elmer,  
Hook's going to see if he can get a family history from Lona's doctor. Do you remember anything about her family? Isn't there some relative that she could have got a call from needing help?" now that Louis thought about it,  
he couldn't remember Lona seeming to have seemingly any family either. She had always volunteered to handle the holiday shifts so those doctors with family could be off. He thought that that the previous Christmas when Elmer had tricked her into coming to their house was actually the first time she had taken a holiday off in years.

"I don't think so." Elmer said after thinking about it for a moment, hoping against hope that someone would have slipped his mind or something. "The only people I've ever heard of are a few cousins and I don't think Lona's talked to them in years." Elmer stopped speaking once more, trying to think of anything connected to Lona's family that could help. He shook his head after a couple of minutes, though. "I think there might have been some sort of problem when Lona's grandparents died and.  
I don't think the cousins even know where she lives now."

Louis nodded in response although they needed to check with those cousins anyway to be on the safe side. He motioned for Elmer to follow him as he headed back towards the main part of the hospital to rejoin Hook and Chris. "What about friends? Lona had to have someone when she was in college or med school."

"Not from what I've heard." Elmer said. Why did his dad think Lona would have had to have had friends in college or med school? He certainly never had. "Why do you think she's here all the time?" Didn't anyone but him understand how isolated Lona could be? Why hadn't he talked to her instead of his stupid attempts at flirting, made her see that he understood and that they could be so good for each other? What if.  
What if he never had that chance now? What if Lona was....

"Elmer, we're going to find her, I promise you." Louis said gently. Okay, he was more than a bit worried himself about finding Lona and the condition that she might be in when she was found but he wasn't going to share those fears with his son.

"I never should have left her last night." Elmer said with a shake of his head, barely able to hold tears back as he thought of it. Why was he such a loser? He failed everyone. First with his mother, not being a good enough child for her to want to fight against her drug addiction, to want to be with him. Then there was his brother that he had failed to save from suicide. Elmer was sure that his father blamed him for that one big time. Now he had failed Lona, the one person he had wanted to protect so much. She shook his head as he thought of it. His brother shouldn't have been the one to jump off of the roof, it should have been him. Everyone would be much better off without him around to mess up things.

"Elmer, it wasn't your fault." Louis told his son gently. "You heard what Henry said about Lona being on her way out when he saw her and she was just starting to look sick then. You wouldn't have...."

"If I had said that I wanted to stay and do the tests then she wouldn't have left either." Elmer said with a shake of his head. He knew what his dad was trying to do but.... It was his fault and he knew that.  
Nothing would change that fact. He had totally failed Lona and he would never forgive himself for it.

"Elmer...."

"Don't. Just don't, okay? Let's just go upstairs and see what we can do about finding Lona." Elmer said firmly, not wanting to talk anymore. He knew it was his fault and what his dad was saying wasn't going to fix that. All he wanted right now was to find Lona somewhere safe and sound. After that, well.... Maybe he could correct the mistake that had been made five years earlier before he did anymore damage to anyone. He should have been the one who died. 


	23. chapter 23

"Find out anything from Lona's doctor?" Louis asked as he exited the elevator and spotted Hook heading down the hallway.

"I would have except it seems that Dr. Meachner has gone to visit his mother in Montana. No idea when he'll be back. Something about a family emergency." Hook said with a shake of his head.

"Is his mother the one who...."

"The one who doesn't believe an any modern form of communication?  
That's the one." Hook said as he shook his head once more as he thought about it. It was always a bet around the hospital how Meachner was going to get his Christmas gift of badly knitted socks each year with his mother's distain for any communications starting after 1850. He thought she had used a carrier pigeon last year. "His office is locked up tight and his secretary isn't going to let me in there unless the police get an order. She's even stricter than Mrs. Powell. Chris is taking a look at Lona's employment record, seeing if she can find any clue how to get in touch with those cousins."

"Why? Lona didn't like them." Elmer said with a frown. Why were they wasting time looking up Lona's cousins when they ought to be looking for Lona?

"Can't say I blame her either." Chris said with a shake of her head as she came down the hallway.

"You found them?" Hook asked her.

"Oh, yes. They weren't listed on Lona's employment record, of course, but it did list the town where she was born. I called directory assistance. If Dr. James notices any long distance calls on the hospital bill, you know nothing."

"They didn't know anything about where Lona could be?" Louis asked.

"No, and when I explained that I was one of Lona's co-workers, the first thing they asked was if she was dead, when could they come to get her stuff. I don't blame Lona for not wanting anything to do with them"  
Chris told them. "And it seems that they're her only relatives, so that's pretty much a dead end. What now?"

Hook stood quietly for a minute, debating. Honestly, he really had no idea where they should go next but knowing that even with the police getting involved that they needed to be doing something, anything, to try to find Lona. The problem was where to look, though. "Elmer, Louis, you have any ideas?" he finally asked. If anyone would have any clues about Lona's life outside of the hospital, it would probably be them.

Louis started to speak but Elmer got there first. "What about the college? Lona's done some classes over there before and she goes over there for fundraisers and stuff."

"College. Good idea." Maybe they had been focusing to narrowly on strictly the hospital and the people there. Okay, Lona didn't seem to really have much of a life outside of it but.... "Chris, could you run by admissions and the ER, see if anyone from the college might have been here the night that Lona disappeared?" If someone Lona had known from there had been present, perhaps they had taken her home to tend and didn't even realize that there was a problem.

Chris nodded and hurried away, a slight bit of hope forming as she did. Maybe after all of the worry they had gone through, it would turn out that there was a simple explanation for everything.

"I'll go and call the college administrator." Louis told Hook.  
"We've met a few times and he's a pretty reasonable man. I'll let him know what's going on and see if he's heard anything, if anyone over there might have any clue about where Lona could be." He started down the hallway,  
motioning for Elmer to follow him. "Elmer, you come with me. You might be able to think of something that I won't."

"I'm going to go and talk to the police again." Hook said. "See if they need any help with anything, introduce them to the rest of the staff."

"Hook, just don't make them spend all of their time interviewing Steg to freak him out!" Elmer called. "We're trying to find Lona here,  
not give Steg a breakdown!" Not that it would really take that much more to push the other doctor over the edge if he wasn't already there. Elmer knew they needed Stegman gone, but he wasn't about to let Hook waste valuable time that could be better spent on the search for Lona doing it.

"Wouldn't even think of it, Elmer." Hook said with a grin and a shake of his head, trying to hide the fact that he had been picturing taking the police officers to meet Stegman and exactly how the insane surgeon would react. "Wouldn't even think of it."

"Dr. Hook?" As Hook aproached the elevator, it opened and Sally started to step out. When she saw him, she stepped back, motioning for him to join her. "Have you found out anything about poor Dr. Massingale?"

"Nothing yet. The police are downstairs right now checking out the basement and then they're going to start interviewing people." Hook told her. "Nothing yet, though. What about.... Do you think you could do a seance?" It sounded more than a bit odd to be discussing a seance in the same breath as he was discussing a police investigation but if it might help and from the strange things that Hook had seen, he was unwilling to think that it wouldn't....

"I just came from talking to Mr. and Mrs. Rickman and telling them the problem. They're willing to do anything that they can to help." Mr.  
Rickman had seemed more than a little upset when Sally had been talking to them, making her a bit suspicious that Dr. Hook's suggestion for the seance might be a very good one, that Dr. Massingale's disappearance might have supernatural overtones. "Do you think you can come to Mr. Rickman's room tonight? I think the sooner that we do this the better, don't you?" Sally knew that there were other spirits, evil ones, in the hospital in addition to little Mary. If they had something to do with Dr. Massingale's disappearance, they needed to find her quickly.

"I'll be there. Is there anything you need?" Hook asked. This would be his first seance, after all, and he wasn't sure exactly what was customary for it.

"Oh, I'll handle all of that. You just come and bring that nice Dr. Draper and probably the Traffs if you think they would be alright with it." Sally told him.

"Anything that might find Lona, Elmer's going to be all for." Hook shook his head as he thought of it. He just hoped Elmer's overeagerness didn't scare little Mary too much. Of course, with how childlike Elmer could be at times, maybe he would get along well with the little ghost.  
"Listen, I have to go and talk to the police now but I'll meet you at say nine, in Peter's room."

Sally nodded as he exited the elevator heading in search of the two detectives. Hook just hoped that something, he didn't care what, would turn up some trace of Lona and soon. 


	24. chapter 24

Hook carefully observed the two detectives as he approached. They were good, obviously good, not giving away any clues as to anything they might have found good or bad. He was actually pleased with that. If something natural and not supernatural was responsible for Lona's disappearance, they would need the best people they could get to help in the search for her.

"Dr. Hook." Detective Ryan said as he spotted the doctor. "We're through down here for the moment although I would like to have that lab sealed until forensics has a chance to go through it."

"That shouldn't be a problem." Hook said with a nod. "Lona's the main one who uses it and with her missing, Dr, James was wanting to close it for now anyway. I'll make a call and get Otto down here to close it off for you for as long as necessary. You'll be wanting to interview the staff now?"

"Yes. Who in particular would have had contact with Dr. Massingale within the last days leading up to her disappearance?" Detective Rogers asked as the three walked down the hallway.

"Elmer, of course. He's down in the lab a lot letting Lona run tests on him. His father. Dr. Draper and I. Dr. Havens was of course the last person to report seeing her. At least three of our nurses, Liz Hinton, Nurse Bannerman and Carrie Von Trier." Hook shook his head slightly as he thought of the detectives trying to question Carrie.  
Perhaps he should offer them some smelling salts before they tried to carry out that particular talk. Being questioned by the police was sure to totally freak the nervous nurse. "Dr. Stegman and Dr. Abelson see her at staff meetings but Dr. Stegman doesn't get along very well with anyone and Brenda's practically his shadow so I doubt that they would know anything useful." He stopped for a moment, walking in silence. The patients. Were there any particular patients that Lona had worked on lately that they would need to talk to? All he could think of was the seismologist and he definitely wasn't going to send the detectives up there to interview him.

"What's your impression of Dr. Massingale?" Detective Rogers asked, closely watching Hook to see how he responded. He could tell that this doctor was clever, very clever, as well as a good observer.

"She's a good doctor, a good researcher. There's no way she would leave her research like this." Hook paused, thinking of how best to describe Lona for them. Honestly, now that he thought about it, how well did he really know her? "She.... Lona tends to be a bit isolated at times, gets too focused on her research. Honestly, we didn't really know a whole lot about her life outside of the hospital until this happened." And then of course the learned that Lona didn't really have a life outside the hospital. Who was he to criticize, though? He lived in the basement,  
after all, and he really couldn't argue anymore that he did it just because the place was rent free. "Elmer and Louis are probably the two that could tell you the most about her. Elmer, I think he knows more about her volunteering for her experiments than most of us do working with her for years. We've been thinking over everything, trying to figure out something that could explain this and none of us have a clue."

"Is there anyone who has had a disagreement with Dr. Massingale recently, anyone that might wish her ill?" Detective Ryan asked.

"No one that we can think of. Lona's focused on her research and she isn't the most aggressive doctor. She tends to let the other doctors take the lead on most things. That's not the kind of thing that leads to making enemies."

"You mentioned her research and Dr. Traff did as well. Are there funds tied to that?" Detective Rogers asked.

Hook had to fight to keep from showing discomfort. He had been really hoping they wouldn't ask the money question for a bit. Since they had, though.... "Lona's good and getting funds, most definitely. A grant came in just today for the sleep lab that was rerouted to Dr. Draper." He might have to be honest with these men but at the same time, Hook wasn't going to let them get the wrong idea. "Needless to say, Chris felt more than a bit bad about it, especially since no one has any idea where Lona is or what happened. Right now Elmer's going to be holding onto the money.  
Chris was going to turn it down but if she did, it would go to Dr. Stegman instead and Lona would never get it back from him. From the looks that he and Brenda were giving Chris after the staff meeting, I think they probably expected that money to go their way to begin with." Okay, Hook honestly didn't seen Steg having anything to do with Lona's disappearance but.  
He shook his head knowing what he did was wrong but after all the trouble the doctor had caused, he wanted to steer at least a bit of annoyance Stegman's way. And surely it wouldn't take the detectives too long to realize that Stegman was too much of an idiot to have actually done something to Lona.

"We'll definitely need to talk to him. We'll be wanting a list of Dr. Massingale's movements over the last few days as well, any patients she might have seen, possible problems on that front. Will you be allowed to release that?" Detective Rogers asked.

"I can't see a problem with it given the circumstances. Everyone just wants Lona found." Hook told them. They had to find her somehow and as soon as possible. 


End file.
